Fairer Futures Partnership Programme: evaluation strategy

Vision and aims

The Scottish Government’s vision for the Fairer Futures Partnerships is to work closely and collaboratively with local authorities to help eradicate child poverty by forging trusting partnerships; inspiring and supporting new ways of working; and creating a learning culture where partners can test and share new models of family-centred provision.

The aims are for Scottish Government to:

• Forge trusting partnerships with local authorities and their wider partners in order to support and catalyse new ways of working that better meet the needs of families at risk of poverty;
• Create a learning culture where partners can test and share new models of family-centred, joined up service provision;
• Embrace opportunities for cross-Scottish Government learning and join up of approaches; and
• Take a leading role in unblocking barriers to change that require national level action.

and for local partnerships to:

• Develop, refine, adapt and test different approaches to providing more effective, person-centred support for families at risk of poverty;
• Collectively build an evidence base and share learning that can inspire action in other parts of Scotland; and
• Scale and sustain successful new models of service design and delivery, potentially leading to longer term savings in public expenditure.

The Fairer Futures Partnerships are operating in a complex policy environment, closely linked with other key policy agendas and initiatives, such as early learning and childcare, employability, Whole Family Wellbeing^[7] and the Promise^[8]. As part of its commitment to whole family support, Scottish Government is also seeking to break down some of the barriers to this at the local level through consideration of increasing funding flexibility, to better enable partners to deliver integrated support, initially for a core group of local authorities with the intention of extending this to other areas thereafter. Along with improved data sharing and collective leadership, this has been identified as a key strategic enabler of more effective whole family support. Collectively these policies are central to the public service reform vision of more preventative, integrated and efficient services, first set out by the Christie Commission in 2011^[9].