Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund evaluation: final report

Annex B: Full Project Summary Round 2 Projects

Round 2: NHS Fife & Citizens Advice and Rights Fife (CARF)

Embedding Income Maximisation in Children’s Health Services Priority Family Groups Targeted: Families with a disabled child

Project Design: NHS Fife and CARF extend their successful maternity partnership to families raising a disabled child. This involves dedicated income maximisation worker, supported by an NHS Advisory Group, delivering tailored advice and casework. Referrals come from NHS staff and CARF’s own case screening.

Project Implementation: A recruitment delay initially meant the project did not get up and running as fast as hoped, but this was resolved via spend re-profiling alongside Scottish Government, enabling appointment in June 2025 of the dedicated worker. Awareness-raising includes a video produced by CARF and distributed to partners, targeted communications, and NHS staff meetings with different departments. By the midpoint (End August 2025), 11 referrals had been received, with cases involving multiple entitlements and complex needs.

Project Impacts: Families are expected to see significant financial gains, including through appeals of rejected claims for elements of Universal Credit, or fresh applications for Child Disability Payment. Families involved are already reporting reduced stress, and improved wellbeing. NHS staff report the new referral route enhances their ability to address socio-economic challenges that contribute to health outcomes.

Future of the Project: Focus now is on scaling referrals while managing caseload quality. Medium-term plans include embedding income maximisation into routine NHS practice and developing feedback loops for referrers. Sustainability depends on securing ongoing funding.

Round 2: Dumfries & Galloway Council / Citizens Advice Service

Accessible Financial Wellbeing Support for Families Priority Family Groups Targeted: All

Project Design: Dumfries & Galloway Citizens Advice Service (DAGCAS) expanded its reach across a large rural authority by recruiting three part-time generalist advisors. Their role is to provide holistic financial wellbeing support — income maximisation, debt advice, housing and energy help — embedded within everyday community venues and family groups. The project design builds on strong partnerships through the Poverty and Inequalities Partnership, positioning CAB as the trusted local provider of financial advice.

Project Implementation: Advisors deliver outreach sessions in family groups and community hubs, alongside telephone and video consultations. Early implementation highlighted tensions between time spent in outreach (relationship-building, but slow to generate referrals) and direct casework. GDPR rules restricted the use of WhatsApp — a platform families said they prefer for arranging appointments and sending documents — forcing staff to rely on slower, less familiar communication routes. While this has not prevented delivery, staff report it has limited efficiency and responsiveness to user needs.

Project Impacts: Despite barriers, delivery has been significant. By June 2025, DAGCAS had delivered 391 sessions and supported 55 priority families, already surpassing its £150,000 target for financial gains. Families have accessed a wide spectrum of support: from successful benefit claims and debt relief to fuel vouchers, housing advice, and charitable grants. Advisors report that the outreach element surfaces complex, hidden needs — even where uptake is initially low — by embedding presence in trusted family spaces. Referrals are often indirect e.g. coming from word of mouth from staff in the outreach venues or via friends who saw the CAB advisers. This holistic approach ensures families who might not seek formal help are drawn into sustained support. The project demonstrates that in rural contexts, continuity and flexibility are vital for maintaining trust and maximising reach.

Future of the Project: Next steps involve balancing outreach and casework more effectively, continuing to test community venues, and documenting the added value of embedding advisors in family groups. Longer-term sustainability depends on securing core funding. Modernising digital communication permissions could also support advisors to use the tools families are most comfortable with.

Round 2: Scottish Borders Council

Community outreach to reach hard-to-access families in rural communities

Priority Family Group/s Targeted: All

Project Design: The Scottish Borders project arose from long-standing quarterly liaison meetings between the Council's Financial Inclusion lead and a consortium of three Citizens Advice Bureaux covering the dispersed geography. These meetings repeatedly returned to the question "who are we missing?" with SIMD data confirming gaps in provision for priority families in communities like Langlee, where families faced a mile-and-a-half uphill walk to reach the nearest bureau. The design is deliberately simple but strategically grounded: the funding has resourced 1.5 FTE advisor posts across the consortium to establish presence in under-served communities, embedding proactive income maximisation and holistic support. Advisors are engaging with familiar everyday venues - food pantries, early years centres, schools, and community hubs - adopting an exploratory "feel-the-way" approach as approachable first points of contact rather than adopting a casework approach on the spot.

Project Implementation: Implementation has drawn on strong pre-existing trust between the CAB consortium and Scottish Borders Council, with the Council lead working with CAB initially to scope and secure funding. During a 3-month administrative funding delay, the CAB lead coordinated a setup phase involving identifying priority venues, approaching community gatekeepers, and negotiating access. The full-time Adviser was then able to hit the ground running in January 2025, bringing value quickly as they were already a fully trained volunteer.

By early spring, outreach was established in five sites spanning three bureau areas. The Langlee case study illustrates the slow, iterative nature of outreach: months 1-2 involved securing access, months 3 onwards saw weekly attendance building informal relationships, months 4-5 brought trusted local intermediaries amplifying the advisor's role, followed by disruption in month 5 due to the departure of a key local connection and a need to shift outreach venue to address concerns around access procedures leaving people feeling stigmatised.

Project Impacts: Tangible impacts include establishing sustained presence across dispersed rural communities with access points where none previously existed, and priority families accessing comprehensive support including food bank referrals, fuel vouchers, debt support, and complex benefits advice. Community intermediary networks are taking shape with grassroots figures acting as trusted referrers. The holistic approach consistently reveals complex, multi-layered family poverty that siloed services typically miss. Intangible impacts include trust-building and stigma reduction, strategic learning generation about community-specific poverty patterns, and community network amplification through word-of-mouth dynamics. The project is generating intelligence that can provide new foundations for broader system improvements while supporting local economic circulation through benefit uptake in deprived communities.

Future of the Project: The project continues adaptive outreach based on accumulated learning, exemplified by shifting from an Early Years Centre to a community centre in Langlee based on stigma concerns. SBC and CAB are proactively considering and pursuing multiple sustainability avenues recognising that successful relationship-building creates opportunities for more efficient service delivery over time. Initial efforts are focusing on building on established foundations. Longer-term, SBC recognises sustainable funding requires embedding outreach within core budget planning rather than relying on short-term external grants. As contingency, they are considering pragmatic alternatives like aligning with Berwickshire Swap events. The preoccupation with sustainability reflects deep concerns that stop-start funding cycles waste substantial investment in building trust, learning and relationships.

Round 2: East Lothian Council

“What Matters?” – building the foundations for family-centred data use Priority Family Group/s Targeted: All

Project Design: The project’s core idea is to reduce the burden on families by moving toward a “tell us once” approach when seeking support, and collecting only the information that helps at the moments it matters. Design elements include a Lived Experience Coordinator role, conversational data capture using the data platform Signal , and a three-way partnership between East Lothian Council (lead), NHS Lothian and Volunteer Centre East Lothian (VCEL).

Project Implementation: Progress to date has been predominantly foundational rather than operational. Early in delivery, line management of the Lived Experience Coordinator shifted from the Council to VCEL to better align with community-centred practice, highlighting the agility of trusted third-sector engagement. Work has centred on resetting roles and governance, establishing engagement protocols (confidentiality/GDPR), and aligning with local policy cycles (e.g. Children’s Services Plan and the Local Outcomes Improvement Plan (LOIP)). Initial conversational engagement with communities has begun, but data integration across services remains fragmented and the “tell us once” ambition is not yet implemented in core workflows. The team reports that short funding horizons and differing organisational cultures continue to slow practical roll-out.

Project Impacts: Impacts at the mid-point (Summer 2025) were largely strategic and cultural: senior stakeholders report sharper awareness of where “lived experience” activity can slip into tokenism, and why trusted third-sector positioning matters for participation. A nascent qualitative dataset is emerging to inform future planning, but there are no material service changes or attributable outcomes for families yet. The work has surfaced systemic constraints — especially around data-sharing and siloed systems — that need addressing before benefits can be realised.

Future of the Project: Immediate priorities are modest and concrete:

• pilot “tell us once” within a limited set of Council services,
• institute regular qualitative briefings for strategic meetings, and
• document learning from the Lived Experience Coordinator model.

Partners flag sustainability risks beyond March 2026 and recommend shifting to longer (5-year) funding horizons.

Round 2: West Lothian Council and The Improvement Service

Data-driven identification of unmet need through interactive dashboard development, and targeted community engagement

Priority Family Group/s Targeted: All

Project Design: The West Lothian Council project is aiming to improve identification and response to child poverty at local level by moving beyond reliance on SIMD. The central innovation is an interactive dashboard developed by The Improvement Service that detects "unmet need" by comparing demand indicators (children in low-income households) with uptake of entitlements such as free school meals, clothing grants, and Education Maintenance Allowance. The project is integrating data sources with practical frontline interventions, with input from an Experts by Experience panel of 25 volunteers with lived poverty experience.

Project Implementation: Following West Lothian Council's identification of data use as a weakness, they partnered with the Improvement Service who brought analytical capacity and experience from other councils. Implementation occurred in phased stages:

1. The Discovery phase identified several other datasets from within the Council for inclusion in the project. It also revealed significant data quality challenges, including over 460 postcode discrepancies between CACI data and council records (tested using the procedure developed by Argyll & Bute Council from their CPAF Round 1 Project).
2. The Define phase produced the first dashboard iteration identifying outlier zones where benefit uptake fell below expected levels.
3. The Develop phase has begun targeting interventions in communities like Stoneyburn and Knightsridge, with sustained local presence through food outlets and targeted mailshots.

Key barriers include legal "grey areas" around data-sharing, manual data transfer processes, and trust-building timelines that conflict with short project cycles.

Project Impacts: Technical achievements include a functioning interactive dashboard integrating multiple datasets and resolving significant data quality issues. Service delivery changes involved targeting activities moving beyond generic campaigns to focused local engagement, with early evidence of income maximisation impacts including one Knightsridge family receiving an additional £158.31 monthly through corrected benefit entitlements.

The project has developed an innovative and essential partnership between analysts and frontline practitioners, which creates a live feedback loop that has previously not been present. For example, Housing Services have been able to immediately adjust their targeting strategies based on dashboard insights. The approach successfully identified areas with unexpectedly low benefit uptake relative to poverty indicators, including communities invisible to SIMD-designated most deprived areas.

Future of the Project: Two sustainability pathways are under exploration. Locally, West Lothian Council plans to embed the approach within poverty profiling cycles with twice-yearly updates and interactive online components. Nationally, scaling could occur through the Improvement Service’s coordination, with Falkirk, South Ayrshire, and East Lothian already expressing interest. However, fundamental challenges remain around maintaining the analyst-practitioner feedback loop that drives continuous refinement and addressing the lack of strategic national framework for data infrastructure.

Round 2: Aberdeen City Council

Participant-led co-design of employability services for young parents

Priority Family Group/s Targeted: Young parents (under-25s when they have children), expanded to include older participants with lived experience of being young parents

Project Design: The project arose from Aberdeen City Council's recognition that young parents represented an unmet need in local employability provision - their employability team had supported fewer young parents than they would have expected in the last few years. CPAF funding enabled genuine participant-led service co-design, with young parents designing employability services that work for them.

The design incorporated data-driven targeting using the Low Income Family Tracker from CPAF Round 1, independent facilitation by Rocket Science, a whole-family approach linking employability with financial inclusion, and inclusive safeguards including financial incentives, childcare accommodation, and flexible formats.

Project Implementation: Recruitment used LIFT data to identify approximately 180 households with under-25 parents facing employment barriers, with targeted outreach combining benefit checks to build trust. Despite bureaucratic delays, proactive preparation prevented timeline disruption. Rocket Science delivered a 12-week co-design programme from April to June 2025, blending individual phone calls, in-person sessions, surveys, and online group discussions. The methodology was genuinely iterative, with participants shaping both service content and the methodology itself. Key adaptations included expanding recruitment criteria due to poor under-25 engagement, restructuring session formats to accommodate children, and shifting to online surveys based on participant preference. Retention at the core paid sessions was exceptional, with 21 parents completing virtually all sessions, and some parents reported that peer friendships continued outwith the project.

Project Impacts: Two key deliverables were produced: a research report and participant-authored "vision for services" document outlining their tailored pathway model. The project created trusted space where participants discovered shared struggles, reducing isolation and stigma while building confidence and community solidarity.

The co-design revealed systemic barriers including Universal Credit fears, employment discrimination, inflexible business culture, and childcare gaps. Participants identified employer inflexibility around family responsibilities as the fundamental barrier, alongside lack of affordable childcare, transport costs, benefit system constraints, and maternity discrimination. The process demonstrated that financial incentives were foundational for engagement while the participant-led methodology strengthened motivation and output legitimacy.

Future of the Project: Final reporting on the co-design element was completed in June 2025 with participants signing off on outputs and expressing strong interest in continued involvement. Aspirations include integration with broader Aberdeen City employability strategy, establishing lived experience panels in procurement processes, and developing mentorship models linking experienced and new young parents. However, sustainability challenges include declining participant engagement now that payment is not available for participation, and no concrete implementation commitments beyond aspirational statements at the time of writing. Success depends on maintaining participant-centred approaches and more broadly, strategies towards addressing fundamental employment market constraints that remain beyond local authority scope.

Round 2: East Renfrewshire Council

Reshaping the local labour market through workplace flexibility to tackle child poverty”

Priority Family Group/s Targeted: All, with particular focus on parents facing workplace inflexibility barriers

Project Design: The East Renfrewshire Council’s project is testing whether reshaping the local labour market could directly tackle child poverty, responding to parents' identification of workplace flexibility as a decisive barrier through the Council's Lived Experience Group. East Renfrewshire Council is partnering with Flexibility Works to design a dual-sided intervention: working with employers to adapt practice, policies, and culture, and working with parents to build awareness, skills, and confidence in negotiating flexibility. This approach aims to address both supply and demand, recognising that families' barriers are matched by employers' reluctance or lack of capacity to change.

Project Implementation: Rapid project mobilisation was enabled by pre-existing relationships. East Renfrewshire Council’s project leads already knew Flexibility Works through previous sessions, and trusted local coordinators were embedded in East Renfrewshire’s networks. Key activities have included employer outreach via the Chamber of Commerce and Business Gateway, pilots with Barrhead Housing Association and East Renfrewshire Council itself through flexible working accreditation, parent awareness workshops delivered with employability services, and embedding flexibility awareness within employability advisor capacity.

Key barriers include that micro-businesses dominate the local economy, with owners lacking HR bandwidth, economic anxieties making flexibility feel non-essential, and CPAF funding boundaries that restricted work to East Renfrewshire businesses despite many residents commuting elsewhere (particularly Glasgow).

Project Impacts: At mid-point, impacts are mostly enabling and cultural rather than measurable child poverty changes. Employer engagement includes around 20 businesses at launch events, follow-up with smaller employers, and embedding flexibility awareness with 8 new start-ups. Parent workshops are increasing knowledge of rights and confidence to negotiate flexibility. East Renfrewshire Council’s parallel commitment to accreditation as the area's largest employer demonstrates leadership and creates internal culture change, including default assumption of flexibility in recruitment. The project is generating greater awareness of challenges facing both families and local businesses, with recognition that changing entrenched business norms requires longer-term strategies than typical project cycles.

The project highlights that flexibility may be fundamental but under-recognised nationally, requiring more national advocacy and policy attention to place flexible working at the centre of Scottish Government's anti-poverty strategy.

Future of the Project: Planned steps include ongoing exploratory outreach taking every opportunity to meet employers and build trust gradually, and a Flexible Working Festival in March 2026 bringing parents, employers, and stakeholders together as both celebration and evaluation. Beyond project end the Council’s own pursuit of flexible working accreditation will help consolidate internal culture change and build credibility with the business community, though stakeholders acknowledge the ideal future involves regional scale working at Glasgow City Region level to better reflect commuting realities.

Round 2: City of Edinburgh Council

Challenging Poverty-Related Stigma Priority Family Groups Targeted: All

Project Design: Led by City of Edinburgh Council with support from The Poverty Alliance, this project addresses poverty-related stigma by producing ten short, animated videos for staff training and wider use. The design emerged from recommendations of End Poverty Edinburgh and a Scotland-wide lived experience panel, who stressed that interactions with staff can feel stigmatising and deter future help-seeking. The project co-produces content through lived experience workshops, a Staff Reference Group, and an appointed animator, with an intentional focus on positive framing and non-Edinburgh-specific outputs to maximise Scotland-wide relevance.

Project Implementation: Two lived experience workshops have surfaced key themes (e.g. recognising staff may also face poverty, and avoiding a patronising tone) and shaped the animator’s creative decisions. In parallel, the Staff Reference Group has aligned emerging messages with Council practice and considered integration into training and communications. The Council’s procurement process us lengthy and threatened to delay the project, but this was managed through early preparation.

Project Impacts: Early impacts include positive participant experiences of co-production, strengthened legitimacy, and agency for panel members. The videos are expected to challenge negative stereotypes, influence everyday service interactions, and provide a flexible training and communication tool across Scotland. They should be ready for distribution in October 2025. This videos will be issued one per month.

Future of the Project: Next steps include participant review of draft animations, final refinement, and dissemination across Council services and partner networks. Sustainability depends on embedding the videos into staff development and wider discussions around use outwith Edinburgh.

Round 2: NHS Tayside / Dads Rock

Support for Fathers Priority Family Groups Targeted: All (access via fathers)

Project Design: This project extends Dads Rock into NHS Tayside to fill a longstanding service gap for fathers. A Dads Rock support worker is linked with maternity services to provide one-to-one and group support, to improve the mental health and income maximisation opportunities for vulnerable new fathers, while raising awareness among NHS staff of the need to offer bespoke support for Dads.

Project Implementation: The project was initially delayed in setup due to funding arrangements, as Dads Rock (as a small charity) required an upfront payment rather than the standard arrears payment model to begin start-up. In negotiation with NHS Tayside and Scottish Government, this barrier was resolved and the project began. Referrals use a simple, low-burden pathway where midwives/health visitors email the Dads Rock worker with further details. Early implementation was affected further by NHS staff restructuring, slowing referrals. This meant the Dads Rock worker had to do more preparation and awareness raising work than initially anticipated. Despite this, four referrals had been made at the midpoint, and a local trip to the fire station attracted strong participation from a wider network of fathers.

Project Impacts: Fathers value dedicated, stigma-free support, receiving advice on benefits, baby equipment, and parenting confidence. NHS staff welcome a visible offer for fathers, which strengthens inclusion in family support systems.

Future of the Project: Planned expansion includes more referrals, group opportunities, and training NHS staff via Fathers Network Scotland. The long-term ambition is to embed father-focused support sustainably within NHS services, though this will be dependent on sustainable funding being available.

Round 2: Aberdeenshire Council & NHS Grampian

Health Equity & Learning Project (HELP): Co-Designing Hospital Support with Families Priority Family Groups Targeted: Families with children with significant health needs

Project Design: The Health Equity & Learning Project (HELP) brought together a lived experience panel of families from rural Aberdeenshire who regularly use Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital. With support from NHS staff and community connectors, families were asked not only to share experiences but to identify priorities and shape practical changes. The project deliberately positioned families as equal partners in decision-making, with resources available for testing the solutions they proposed.

Project Implementation: Families engaged through flexible online sessions, one-to-one calls, and digital tools. They were supported with confidentiality protocols and given clear ownership of ideas. Issues surfaced included the affordability of food during hospital stays, the costs of travelling long distances from rural areas, and the need for staff training on supporting neurodivergent children. Small-scale tests of change have been slower to put in place than anticipated, as NHS systems require multiple levels of review and approval, even for proposals which feel straightforward to many families such as the provision of microwaveable meals in family rooms. While this has slowed progress, it also ensures any changes are properly integrated and sustainable within the hospital environment. Partnerships with the Archie Foundation and welfare rights services have helped further keep the project practical and responsive to family-identified needs.

Project Impacts: The most striking impact so far has been the empowerment of families. Participants described moving from feelings of isolation to a sense of being valued as partners and “change agents.” The group created peer connections, reducing stigma and strengthening confidence, with some families reporting increased motivation in other areas of life. Tangible gains are also emerging: families have secured significant additional income through welfare rights advice; food support initiatives are underway; and NHS staff report greater awareness of the non-medical pressures affecting families, including transport and accommodation costs. NHS staff are now reflecting on how they can ensure that children are not called into hospital unnecessarily for short appointments, which could either be addressed in the community or consolidated into fewer, longer, visits. The project has also created new cross-sector collaborations, such as discussions on embedding welfare rights advice directly within the hospital.

Future of the Project: The next phase will focus on testing and evidencing the family-led interventions around food, transport, and staff training. The longer-term ambition is to embed both these service improvements and the family panel model itself as an ongoing mechanism for co-design within NHS Grampian. Sustainability will require continued commitment from the NHS to support change at pace, and from third-sector partners to provide trusted links with families. Ensuring that families see their priorities translated into concrete, lasting outcomes is essential to maintaining trust and momentum.

Round 2: South Ayrshire Council

Wallacetown Developmental Needs & Additional Support Needs Priority Family Groups Targeted: All

Project Design: This project investigates links between poverty and additional support needs (ASN), especially speech, language, and communication, in Wallacetown. It adopts participatory action research, led by a project officer with lived experience and community credibility. Goals include informing early intervention, parental wellbeing assessments, and long-term Council strategies.

Project Implementation: Despite reduced timelines due to start-up delays related to recruiting the researcher, the project established a base in Newton Primary, leveraging local trust. Early service mapping revealed gaps and complexity, while symbol boards and vouchers were introduced to support participation. Full engagement with families began in August 2025.

Project Impacts: Though still early, the project has already influenced Council planning cycles and improved stakeholder coordination. Families are engaging in conversations about lived experience, restoring trust with services, and informing parental wellbeing tool development.

Future of the Project: Next steps include completing evidence gathering, developing a parental wellbeing tool, and embedding findings in the 2026–30 Children’s Services Plan and Parenting Strategy. Sustainability may involve continuing legacy tools such as symbol boards in public spaces.

Round 2: Stirling Council

Early Intervention Family Engagement Priority Family Groups Targeted: All

Project Design: The Stirling CPAF project was created to address a critical gap in provision: while existing services supported young people with barriers to education, these typically focused on the individual child, and often at secondary level. The CPAF role of Family Engagement Worker was designed to intervene earlier, working holistically with families from Primary 1 upwards where poor attendance can begin to emerge. The remit extends beyond the child to parents and siblings, tackling root causes such as poverty, parental mental health, unemployment, and caring responsibilities. By connecting the dots between education, family wellbeing, and employability, the project aims to create sustainable conditions for school attendance and improved family wellbeing.

Project Implementation: Referrals are identified by combining attendance data with poverty indicators (e.g. free school meal eligibility), and only proceed with parental consent to build trust. Early rollout was delayed by recruitment processes, with the worker starting in May 2025 just before summer holidays. Despite this, a pipeline of referrals was already prepared by other staff, and the worker began with training and establishing routines of contact. Caseloads are capped at 15 families, given the intensity of support needed.

Implementation has required a highly relational and flexible approach. The worker adapts daily to family needs: accompanying children into school, helping parents establish morning routines, arranging holiday club attendance to maintain structure, or providing short breaks for carers. This also includes advocacy for a child’s needs within their school, to support adaptations that may make attendance easier. Importantly, referrals are screened by a multi-agency group that does not include social work, an intentional design choice to ensure families feel safe engaging.

Project Impacts: Early evidence shows tangible improvements. Children benefit from greater structure and confidence, while parents report reduced stress, feeling listened to, and reassurance that they are not “failing.” Families also describe ripple effects across whole households: siblings joining in activities and a more positive home environment. At midpoint, the project was reporting that the first few weeks of the Autumn term had seen significantly improved attendance at school from those receiving support, or clearer routes towards that goal.

The role has surfaced systemic gaps, such as older siblings not on school radars (and ability to support them into college when taking a whole-family approach), and has shown how school attendance issues are often rooted in wider household vulnerabilities (e.g. bereavement, insecure housing, PTSD, or autism). The worker’s personality and non-judgemental style have been vital enablers, with families highlighting their warmth and flexibility as key to building trust.

Future of the Project: The next phase focuses on sustaining improvements without fostering dependency, developing clear exit strategies while linking families to long-term supports. The demand is stark — around 500 families could be eligible, far beyond the capacity of a single worker. Stakeholders see clear potential to expand the model with additional staff, but emphasise that scaling must preserve its relational, family-centred ethos.

Future aspirations also include connecting more parents to employment, recognising that financial stability underpins school attendance. However, this is acknowledged as complex, given many families’ health and caring responsibilities.