Child poverty pathfinders in Dundee and Glasgow: phase two evaluation - report appendices

Appendix C – Topic guides: Glasgow

Child Poverty Pathfinder – Glasgow Helps Families Wave 1 discussion guide

Summary of key topics to cover:

• Informed consent – ensuring that they understand what is involved, how their data will be used, the voluntary nature of taking part, and that it won’t impact on any services they might receive. Record consent to take part and (if agree) be audio-recorded.
• Background information about the participant – making sure they are a family with children <16, that they have been involved with Glasgow Helps, family characteristics, current socio-economic status
• ‘Story’ of their engagement with Glasgow Helps over time, including:
• Initial engagement – when/how they first had contact with them, initial expectations/concerns
• Further / ongoing engagement – what/when/how/how much contact they’ve had with GH, reasons/views on level of engagement, barriers/facilitators to engaging with GH.
• Support needs – what issues were they facing when first had contact with GH (explore nature/range of issues and impact they were having)? Had they sought support from elsewhere (if yes, what happened, if no, why not)? What did they hope to get from GH?
• Assessment of needs – conversations they’ve had with GH workers about their needs – how effective these have been in identifying needs, and how they’ve changed over time.
• Support and relationships – types of support GH workers have offered and impact of these, views on relationship with GH staff and if/how this differs from other professionals
• Referrals – other services referred to – at first contact and beyond (exploring this in detail – what happened, what was the outcome, barriers/facilitators to taking up referrals?)
• Outcomes for families – views on what has changed for them & their family as result of contact with GH – probing in particular on impacts on employment/training and feelings about work, financial situation, and quality of life. If helpful, what is it about the support from GH that has made the difference to them? What, if anything, was less helpful/didn’t work? How does experience of GH compare with other services they’ve experience of?

Accessibility of support – views on ease/difficulty of getting the support they need from GH and what might make it easier.

Suggestions for improvement / other feedback

Section 1: Introduction and consent

Aim: to make sure we gain informed consent from participant before taking part including consent for recording.

• Thank participant for taking part and introduce yourself and Ipsos Scotland.
• Check they got an information sheet and check if they need it in another language or format, or would like you to go over it with them in detail? Do they have any questions on any aspect? Then let them know you will go over the key points.
• Remind participant/s of the aims of the research:

The Scottish Government has asked us, Ipsos Scotland (an independent research organisation), to get feedback from families about Glasgow Helps. The aim of the research is to find out what went well and what could be done better in future. We’ll also be speaking to people who helped organise and deliver the project. Once we have spoken to everyone, we’ll write a report summarising what everyone has said and that will be published by the Scottish Government.

• Provide reassurances of anonymity and confidentiality:

It will not be possible for the Scottish Government to know who took part in the research.

We will include quotes in the report, but these would be anonymous. No identifying information about individuals or families (e.g. names or contact details) will be passed on to anyone outside the research team (me and my colleagues at Ipsos).

• Remind participant that the interview will last around 30-45 minutes and that they will receive a thank you voucher which you will sort out at the end of the discussion (if over phone, we can post this to them, or email them codes if they prefer e-vouchers).
• Remind participant that there are no right or wrong answers. It’s really useful to hear what could have been done better as well as what went well.
• Emphasise that taking part is completely voluntary - they don’t have to answer any questions they don’t want to answer and can decide to stop the interview at any point. Taking part – or not – won’t affect the support they get from Glasgow Helps.
• Remind that they are free to change their mind and decide not to take part at any time before or during the interview, or after the interview until the findings have been written up.
• Check if participant has any questions.

Note: Spend time making sure interviewee understands what the interview is about and what we/the Scottish Government will do with the information. Offer to go through information sheet if necessary.

• Request permission to record interview. Explain that this is so we can listen back to what they’ve said to make sure we understood it correctly, and that recordings will not be shared outside the research team at Ipsos.

That’s recording us now. Could I quickly ask you to confirm for the recording that you are happy to take part based on the information we just discussed, and that you’re happy to be recorded for Ipsos to listen back to?

Section 2 – Background/building rapport

Aim: to build rapport and gain understanding of participant’s life.

• To start with, could you tell me a bit about yourself?
• What area of Glasgow do you live in? Have you lived there long?
• Who do you live with? Check ages of children.
• How do you spend your time in a typical week?

If not clear, check if they are working, studying or volunteering at the moment and probe for details – where? what? full time/part-time? how long have they been doing that for?

Section 3 – Initial engagement with Glasgow Helps

Aim: explore initial engagement processes.

How did you first find out about Glasgow Helps?

• Did you come across GH yourself or did somebody refer you?
• How did you hear about Glasgow Helps? Where? Who from? (e.g. professionals/family/friends). What did they say about it?

If professional referred – how did you feel about that? (e.g. not sure why referred, stigma, pleased to be offered support)?When did you first contact Glasgow Helps?

• Why did you first decide to contact Glasgow Helps? What were you hoping to find out or get help with?

Section 4 – Ongoing contact with Glasgow Helps

Aim: To gain an overview of extent / nature of contact with Glasgow Helps since first contact.

It would be great to hear a bit more about your experience of getting help from Glasgow Helps since that first contact.

• Can you tell me a bit about what that has involved for you?
• Since you first got in touch, how often have you had contact / how many times have you been in touch with any of the GH team?
• What kinds of contact do you have with them? Text, phone calls, emails? In person? (where?)
• Do you contact them, or do they contact you, or a mix?
• Do you usually speak to the same person, or does it vary?
• Have you been in touch with the Glasgow Helps team more/less often at different points in time since you first contacted them?
• How do you feel about the amount of contact you have had with Glasgow Helps?
• Would you like to have more / less contact?
• If more - what sorts of things would you like more contact about?
• How often would you like to have contact with them, ideally?
• Are you happy with the type of contact you have with them? (e.g. would they like to be able to contact them in different ways?)

If did not engage with the project for long:

• Why did you decide not to stay in touch with Glasgow Helps?
• Were there any barriers or issues that meant it was hard for you to use Glasgow Helps? E.g. money, timing, other commitments, etc?
• Was there anything in particular that was off putting about the approach Glasgow Helps took?

Section 5 – Support needs, assessment, and relationship GH staff

Aim: to understand the needs they came to the project with, explore views on effectiveness of approaches to assessing needs, and relationship with GH staff.

Initial support needs

If you are happy to, can you tell me a bit more about the issues you were facing when you first had contact with Glasgow Helps?

• What kinds of challenges / issues were you facing when you first had contact with Glasgow Helps?
• What impacts were these issues having for you and your family?
• What do you think were the main reasons you were having these issues?

(Probes above intended to explore lived experience and perspectives on causes a bit more)

If not mentioned, probe on:

• whether had issues they needed help straight away with – e.g. food, paying bills, housing repairs.
• whether they wanted help around getting into work or improving their work situation, or accessing training or education? What were main challenges they faced around work?
• whether they wanted help with benefits – and if so which ones?
• and whether there were any other issues they were looking for help with – e.g. childcare, health and wellbeing, anything else?
• Which of these did you most want help with? Why was that the most important thing to you?
• Had you asked anyone else for help with these things before you came to Glasgow Helps? What happened when you asked for help previously?

Assessment of needs

Can you tell me about conversations you have had with Glasgow Helps to understand what help or support you needed?

• What kinds of things did they ask when you first got in touch with GH, to find out what kinds of support you might need?
• How did you find having that conversation? How easy or difficult was it to talk to them about your life and where you might need a bit of extra support? What made it easy or difficult? What, if anything, would have made it easier to discuss?
• Have you been able to discuss all the things you thought were important with Glasgow Helps? (narrow/ wide enough focus, relevant/ irrelevant questions)
• Were you happy with how Glasgow Helps spoke to you to understand what you need? What was good / bad about how they spoke to you?
• How often have you spoken about these things?
• Has what you’ve discussed changed over time from when you first had contact with Glasgow Helps to now? How/why?

Section 6 – Support, relationship and referrals

Aim: to understand the support they have accessed through Glasgow Helps, both directly and via referrals, and to explore their relationship with GH staff.

Support from Glasgow Helps

• Can you tell me a little bit about the types of support or help Glasgow Helps have offered you?
• What kind of support, advice or help have they offered?
• How have they tried to help you? (Probe fully)
• Offering advice? (probe on what)
• Speaking to other professionals for you? (who? What about?)
• Organising things for you directly (what?)
• Putting you in touch with other professionals or organisations? (See referrals probes, below)
• Any other ways?
• How helpful or not have you found this? What was particularly helpful? What was less helpful? (Probe for different advice/support /help offered)
• Was there anything you needed help with that your key worker couldn’t support/ couldn’t refer you to someone who could support?

Relationship with key worker / support worker

• What sort of relationship would you say you have with the staff you speak to at Glasgow Helps?
• Do you always speak to the same person? Is that important to you? (why/not?)
• How do Glasgow Helps staff compare with other professionals you might have had contact with? Different or the same? How?
• Do you feel you trust at the staff at Glasgow Helps? What do they do/say that makes you feel that way?
• What do they do particularly well in terms of how they work with you? What do they do less well?
• Is there anything Glasgow Helps could do to build better relationships with families in Glasgow that would benefit from the kinds of support they offer?

Referrals

• Have you been put in touch with any other services by Glasgow Helps?
• Who were you put in touch with? Who put you in touch with them?
• What did they say you they would be able to help you with?
• What happened after they put you in touch with them?
• Did you actually have any contact with them? If not, why not – what were the barriers?
• What was the outcome? Did they help them? How?
• If they didn’t get the help they wanted, did they go back to GH to let them know? Were they able to offer alternative help?
• Are there any services they’ve been referred/signposted to by GH that they haven’t been in touch with yet, but plan to contact in the future? What/why/when?
• You mentioned that you wanted help with [refer back to what they told you previously]. Were you able to access help or support for that, either from GH or someone they put you in touch with? Probe as above.

Section 7- Outcomes for families

Aim: to explore perceived outcomes for families.

Key outcomes: impact on employment and wellbeing

What, if anything, would you say has changed for you as a result of your contact with Glasgow Helps?

• What has changed for you personally?
• Has anything changed for the rest of your family, including your children?

If not already mentioned, probe on:

• Employment / training status (see more detailed probes below)?
• Access to childcare?
• Health / wellbeing?
• Housing situation?
• Confidence / how they feel about the future? (inc. how they feel about employment in the future, if not currently employed).
• Children’s wellbeing
• Skills
• Finances

For each, probe fully on:

• What role did Glasgow Helps play in that? What impact did they have?
• What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t been in touch with Glasgow Helps? Do you think you would have been able to get help with this from somewhere else?

Employment

How, if at all, has your work situation changed since you first came to/ worked with Glasgow Helps?

If in work:

• How long have you been in your work?
• If new role, did GH or any of the services they put you in touch with, provide any support in getting that?
• Are you happy with your job?
• Would you like to make any changes?
• If so, have you been getting support with ways of doing that? Who from? What kind of support?

If not in work:

• Are you thinking about moving into employment at any point in the future?
• If so, have you been getting support with ways of doing that? Who from? What kind of support?
• Can you tell me more about that? (e.g. confidence boosting, job searching, skills training)

If work is not seen as an option in the foreseebale future: Move on

• Has there been any change to your financial situation since you accessed support at Glasgow Helps?
• Have these income increases been via benefits or employment or costs savings? (probe for e.g. moving into work, changing jobs, working more hours, claiming new benefits)
• Do you think working with Glasgow Helps helped you be better off? In what way?
• What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t been in touch with Glasgow Helps? Do you think you would have been able to get help with this from somewhere else?
• (If participant seems comfortable talking about financial impacts): How manageable would you say you feel your financial situation is now? What would make it more manageable? Are there areas you feel you still need support with? Have you spoken to your key worker about this?

Thinking about how things have changed for you, what difference has that made to you and to your family’s quality of life would you say?

Have there been any changes that have not been positive, or that you didn’t expect when you first went to GH for support?

Section 8 – Accessibility of Pathfinder support

Aim: To explore views on accessibility of GH support.

• How easy or difficult have you found it generally to get the support you need from Glasgow Helps?
• Has it been easier or more difficult to get help/support form GH compared with other services you might have experienced? How/why?
• IF EASIER: what do you think made it easier? If not easy: what would have made it easier for you?

Section 9 - Summary & thoughts on improvement

Aim: overview of views of the GH and suggestions for improvement.

Overall, how would you summarise your experience of Glasgow Helps?

If not covered: What do you think have been the key benefits for your family?

What is it about the service that made the most difference to you/your family?

(Probe on how this has made a difference - accessible, affordable, flexible?)

• How (if at all) could the project be improved?
• Is there any other help, support or advice you think Glasgow Helps could provide, that would improve the service they offer to families with children in particular?
• Is there anything they particularly like that they would like to see more of?
• Anything there could be less of?
• How could people organising similar projects in future encourage more people with families like you to take up support?
• How does your experience with Glasgow Helps compare with that of other services you have used/ support you have received?
• Any final thoughts/feedback they think it would be useful for us to know?

Section 10: Wrap up and re-contact

That’s everything I wanted to ask you today, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it. I’ll stop the recording now [stop recording].

Consent to recontact form:

Just to remind you, we’ll be writing a report to summarise everything you and others have told us about Glasgow Helps and other similar projects that we’re looking at in Glasgow and Dundee. It will be published on the Scottish Government website, so you’ll be able to search for it and read it if you’re interested. It will probably be published Spring 2025.

If you would like, we can send you a link to the report when it’s published. If so, we’ll keep your name and email or postal address for this purpose and wait to securely delete it until after we’ve sent you the link to the report.

We might want to speak to you again in around 6 months’ time, to find out how you’re getting on and whether Glasgow Helps is still having any impact for you. You’d be completely free at the time to decide whether you wanted to speak to us. Would you be willing to share your contact details with us so that we can get in touch to speak to you about Glasgow Helps again?

If yes to either of the above, complete contact details sheet and add to secure spreadsheet.

Thank you voucher: Check whether prefer Amazon voucher OR L2S – make sure they sign receipt for this.

That’s everything from me. Do you have any questions before we finish?

Thank and close.

Child Poverty Pathfinder – Wave 1 professional stakeholder interviews discussion guide – strategic partners

Notes

• This is a topic guide, not a questionnaire – it is a guide to steer the conversation to ensure relevant topics are covered appropriately, with suggestions of questions that might be useful. It is not expected that interviewers will ask every question, and interviews may not proceed linearly – interviewers will follow up on issues raised by participants as appropriate.
• You will be interviewing stakeholders in a range of different roles with respect to the Pathfinder. This version of the topic guide includes questions we think are more likely to be relevant to strategic partners, including the GCC strategic lead, operational lead and manager and SG policy leads. There are separate topic guides for the operational key worker teams and services operating at the drop-in in Glasgow.

Summary of key aims/topics for interview:

• Across the professional stakeholder interviews, we want to find out:
• Whether and how professionals think the PF is delivering impacts for families in poverty, and
• Whether and how the PF is delivering system change
• With a focus on understanding barriers, facilitators, and lessons for future roll-out (locally and in other areas of Scotland)
• Each topic guide covers all three, though this topic guide includes a little more on system change.

Introduction

Introduce self and Ipsos

• Check in with how they are. Is now still an OK time to speak to us?
• Introduce the research: The Scottish Government has commissioned Ipsos to evaluate the Child Poverty Pathfinders in Dundee and Glasgow.

We’re taking a multi-method approach to this, including both quant data - PF’s own monitoring data - and qual data, including interviews with families and with professionals – which is where you come in.

We’re doing qual interviews in two main waves, in addition to the early interviews we did at the scoping phase – this is wave 1, wave 2 will be later in the year in Autumn.

• Discuss anonymity and confidentiality.
• Won’t use any names in the report. If we use quotes in the report, they will be anonymous.
• Hope they will feel able be open in your answers, as the learning from this will hopefully help inform improvements across Scotland.
• BUT, we are aware that offering concrete guarantees of confidentiality is very difficult in this context as are only certain people working on the PF and may be obvious who you are from what you say.
• So we will share our notes on the interview with you after the interview, and you can let us know if there is anything you would rather wasn’t included or wouldn’t want to be quoted on.
• Remind participant(s) that they don’t have to answer any questions they don’t want to answer, and that they are welcome to stop the interview at any time.
• Interview will last around 45-60 minutes – check how long they have available.

PF at the moment

Probe if necessary / if time:

• What do you see as its main aims?
• How does this fit with the strategic direction around Child Poverty in the city?

Probe around:

• aims for improving outcomes for families,
• and system-change aims (improving system of services and support for families in Glasgow)
• Have the aims changed over time? How? Are they now settled or are they continuing to evolve?
• What would you include as part of PF activity? Glasgow Helps, associated ‘campaigns e.g. Financial Inclusion activity, other things?
• How have the activities the PF involves changed over time?

Outcomes for families

• Where do you feel the PF - or particular elements of it - has been able to make most difference to families with children? (probe for range of impacts across different activities)
• What elements have had the biggest impact? (probe – GH model as a whole, particular elements of GH, or other elements of the PF?)
• Are there areas where you feel it has been harder to help or make a difference for families so far?

Probe around:

• Whether there are particular issues families face you feel the PF has been able to make more / less able of a difference on so far (and why)?

If not mentioned, probe around

• helping them access (better) work/training;
• improving their income from benefits;
• helping with cost-of-living issues;
• and wider issues like confidence and health and wellbeing. (both parents and children)
• Are there particular types of families it’s been easier or harder to make a difference for? (e.g. probe re. TCPDP family types)
• How far do you feel the PF is succeeding in putting families on a pathway out of poverty? (probe on evidence for this)
• What else is needed to support this?

System change impacts

Can you tell us about how you see the PF contributing to ‘system change’

• What are the elements of the PF you think will contribute to system change?
• In what ways will these help improve the system and, in turn, outcomes for families with children?
• Is there a measurable impact to these improvements?
• What about value for money? Are there cost savings/ other efficiencies? (Probe for in the team, elsewhere in the system)
• How much impact do you feel the PF has had so far in terms of system change?
• Improved joint working? Both in terms of the number and types of partners involved, as well as how they work together
• Shared values?
• Improved data sharing?

For each, probe on: examples, what contributes to change, how important has the PF in this - versus this being the prevailing direction of travel anyway, what the barriers are to change, ie what’s different this time?

• what else the PF needs to do to help create system change eg bringing in other partners, improving pathways, reach?
• What, if anything, do you feel has been learned from GH (if known) or the wider PF about how to improve outcomes for families with children that you would share with other areas?
• How has learning from GH or the wider ‘Phase 1’ PF impacted on plans for other elements of the PF? E.g. how has it shaped plans for the booster ward support?
• Has learning from GH or the wider PF impacted other aspects of how your organisation is working with families?
• Has it impacted on how other services in Glasgow work with families with children? Which services? In what ways?
• What are the things you think still need to change in terms of how services work in order to better meet the needs of families in Glasgow?
• Are there any other changes to the wider system as a whole (rather than individual services) that you think are needed to better meet families’ needs?
• If other services made those changes, do you think there would still be a need for ongoing PF support or not? Why?

Views on Glasgow Helps model and the NWD Network

GH and its place in the NWD network of support, is seen as one of the key parts of the early PF model for the purposes of the evaluation. Our understanding is that at the moment, GH involves provision of a help line and website aimed particularly at some of the most vulnerable people in the city, but also available more generally as a signposting service. Calls to the helpline are initially taken by Customer Service Advisors, but if people need more help they are referred to a Support Officer, who can carry out a fuller Holistic Needs Assessment and, if indicated, work with them longer-term to address their needs. We’d like to understand a bit more about your views on how these different elements have been working and what other areas (not just in Glasgow) could learn from this.

General reflections on the model

• What do you know about GH and its underpinning approach?
• What are your overall reflections on how effective you think the GH approach is? (if interviewee does not know about the detail of GH, ask about the approach of taking people from initial contact to assessment of needs, targeting support, NWD network where relevant)
• What has worked well to date? (if does not know GH, ask how well Glasgow does in relation to the above section in brackets, then move onto next section)
• What has worked less well?

Probe for views on each of:

• Multi-agency approach (within the PF orgs eg GCVS, Moneymatters, GEMAP and the West of Scotland Housing association, and also linking up with operational staff from other organisations such as the Police), developing the NWD approach
• Telephone-based support
• Role of assessment of needs/ support worker / relationships with families
• Anything else?
• Thinking specifically about the PF - and GH as a vehicle for supporting families with low-incomes - where have the challenges / barriers to delivery / outcomes been? Have these been overcome?

Probe:

• Availability/ routes to of other services?
• GH demand/ staff time?
• Families’ feelings about accessing services?
• Data sharing issues?
• Wider benefits system?
• Anything else?

What, if anything, would you change about the model?

How different is what PF is doing from what was available for families previously?

From what you know about the service, does this approach cost more, less, or about the same as what was delivered previously? If more / less: in what ways does it cost more / less?

Reach (ask everyone)

• Who is the PF activity/ GH (inc NWD network activity accessed via GH) reaching most effectively?
• Balance between families with children and other households?
• Any groups of families you feel are missing or aren’t being engaged by the PF? Or who engage initially but then drop-off?
• What are the barriers?
• Is there anything could change about the PF (or wider services) that might help address this?

Probe on TCPDP groups: families with 3+ children, families with children under 1, families with young mothers, families with a disabled family member, single parents, families from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Suggested improvements and future

• Can you tell me more about the planned evolution of the PF in Glasgow?
• And are there other ways in which you think it should change, to better meet its aims for families or system change?
• What, if anything, would you change/ are you changing about GH?

Thank you and ending interview

• Is there anything else you would like to add?
• Do you have any questions about the research?
• Are you happy to be quoted anonymously in any reports?
• Check contact details for sharing copy of notes.

Child Poverty Pathfinder – Wave 1 professional stakeholder interviews discussion guide – Glasgow Helps operational staff

Notes

• This is a topic guide, not a questionnaire – it is a guide to steer the conversation to ensure relevant topics are covered appropriately, with suggestions of questions that might be useful. It is not expected that interviewers will ask every question, and interviews may not proceed linearly – interviewers will follow up on issues raised by participants as appropriate.
• You will be interviewing stakeholders in a range of different roles with respect to the Pathfinder. This version of the topic guide includes questions we think are more likely to be relevant to operational staff – Glasgow Helps Key Workers. There are separate topic guides for Glasgow strategic staff and other senior stakeholders, and for non-GH operational staff.

Summary of key aims/topics for interview:

• Across the professional stakeholder interviews, we want to find out:
• Whether and how professionals think Glasgow Helps in particular - including support from other orgs accessed via GH - and the PF as a whole is delivering impacts for families in poverty, and
• Whether and how the PF is delivering system change
• With a focus on understanding barriers, facilitators, and lessons for future roll-out (locally and in other areas of Scotland)
• Each topic guide covers all three, though this topic guide is more focused on delivery and impacts for families.

Introduction

Introduce self and Ipsos

• Check in with how they are. Is now still an OK time to speak to us?
• Introduce the research: The Scottish Government has commissioned Ipsos to evaluate the Child Poverty Pathfinders in Dundee and Glasgow.

We’re taking a multi-method approach to this, including both quant data (using monitoring data from GH and potentially other data collected about other parts of the PF) and qual data, including interviews with families and with professionals –

We’re doing qual interviews in two main waves, in addition to the early interviews we did at the scoping phase – this is wave 1, wave 2 will be later in the year in Autumn. We know that GH isn’t the only element of the PF, but as there’s interest in what other areas can learn from the GH model, we agreed to focus on GH in the first wave of fieldwork. Wave 2 will focus more on new elements of the PF, like the focused work in wards with high levels of child poverty.

• Discuss anonymity and confidentiality.
• Won’t use any names in the report. If we use quotes in the report, they will be anonymous.
• Hope they will feel able be open in your answers, as the learning from this will hopefully help inform improvements across Scotland.
• But, we are aware that offering concrete guarantees of confidentiality is very difficult in this context as are only certain people working in particular roles and may be obvious who you are from what you say.
• So we will share our notes on the interview with you after the interview, and you can let us know if there is anything you would rather wasn’t included or wouldn’t want to be quoted on.
• Remind participant(s) that they don’t have to answer any questions they don’t want to answer, and that they are welcome to stop the interview at any time.
• Discuss how long the interview will last (and how long they have)
• Request permission to record – this in case my notes are unclear and I need to go back and check anything. The recording will not be shared with anyone outside the research team and will be securely deleted after the research is complete.

Any questions before we start?

At start of recording – I just need to confirm for the record that you are giving verbal consent that you are happy to take part in this interview, and happy for the interview to be recorded for Ipsos to listen back to.

About the participant and their role on the PF

To start off with, it would be helpful if you could very briefly describe your role

What does a typical day or week at work look like for you?

Current understanding of the PF

Before I ask you about delivering GH in more detail, just wanted to ask you a bit about what you understand to be the aims and scope of the Glasgow Pathfinder as we know from the conversations we’ve had with PF partners since October that the PF is continuing to evolve. It would be helpful to hear from you how you would describe the Glasgow Child Poverty PF at the moment.

Probe if necessary / if time:

• What do you see as the PF’s main aims?

Probe around aims for improving outcomes for families, and system-change aims (improving system of services and support for families in Glasgow, improving data collection/ storage/access (eg Advice Pro)

• Have the aims changed over time? How? Are they now settled or are they continuing to evolve?
• What would you say are the main PF activities?
• Glasgow Helps is a key element of the Glasgow PF, what else would you consider to be part of the PF provision?
• How have the activities it involves changed over time? (eg moving from pandemic service to a more holistic support offer)

Views on Glasgow Helps model - encompassing NWD - and impact for families

Our understanding is that at the moment, GH involves provision of a help line and website aimed particularly at some of the most vulnerable people in the city, but also available more generally as a signposting service. Calls to the helpline are initially taken by Customer Service Advisors, but if people need more help they are referred to a Support Officer, who can carry out a fuller Holistic Needs Assessment and, if indicated, work with them longer-term to address their needs.

We’d like to understand a bit more about your views on how Glasgow Helps has been working and what other areas (not just in Glasgow) could learn from this. Our particular interest is around how the model works for engaging and supporting families with low incomes.

Targeting / engaging families

• To the best of your knowledge, is our understanding of the process right generally?
• Can you briefly describe the different ways people find out about Glasgow Helps?
• Do you have any information on how families with children, in particular, tend to find out about GH?
• Who do you work with/ target? Do you target families with children specifically, to encourage them to use GH? If yes, how? How well does this work?
• What do you think works best to encourage families on low incomes to contact you? What have you learned that you would want to share with other areas who might be thinking about doing something similar?
• What are the main ways people can get in touch with GH/ other orgs?
• Who tends to get in touch?
• Balance between families with children and other types of households?
• Has this balance changed over time? If yes, how?
• In terms of families with children:
• Which families do you think come most often for help? Do you see any patterns in terms of needs, or types of families that come more often?
• Are there any particular groups of families you feel are missing or don’t tend to come to get in touch? If so, why do you think they don’t? Is there anything that might help engage them?

Probe on TCPDP groups: families with 3+ children, families with children under 1, families with young mothers, families with a disabled family member, single parents, families from ethnic minority backgrounds.

First contact

• Can you describe briefly what happens when someone first contacts GH?
• Who do they speak to?
• What kinds of information do you ask for?
• What kinds of support or information do you typically provide?
• What happens next?
• Is any of this different for called you identify as having children under 16, or is it similar for all callers?

Assessment of needs

Our understanding is that after first contact, some families are then offered a Holistic Assessment of Needs.

• Could you talk us through how callers are identified and selected for this?
• How do you decide who might benefit from a HNA? Is it offered to all callers with children under 16 or just some?
• How do you introduce this idea to them?
• When callers with children don’t want to take up / be involved in an assessment, what do they tell you about this?
• Are there particular families that are easier / harder to engage with a HNA? E.g. in terms of their needs or family type.

Probe again on TCPDP groups – SG is particularly interested in learning about supporting large families, families with babies, young mothers, single parents, families with a disabled family member, and families from ethnic minority backgrounds as they’re all groups that tend to be at higher risk of being in poverty.

• Is there any learning from your HNA/ offer of more targeted support about what does / doesn’t work with any of these groups?
• How useful is the HNA in identifying support needs for families with children in particular? Anything you think could be improved to make the HNA process more effective for families?
• What have you learned about what works / doesn’t work in discussing their needs with families? What would you want to share with other areas who might be considering doing something similar?

Ongoing engagement with families through GH

• Can you tell us a bit more about your contact with families once they have had a HNA?
• Does everyone who has a HNA get offered additional support / contact from GH? If not, how do you decide who is offered this?
• What types of families are / are not offered ongoing contact?
• Can you tell me a bit more about how you work with families after their initial HNA?
• What kinds of contact do you have with them?

Probe on mode – e.g. face-to-face appointments, telephone, text

Probe on frequency of contact – how often are they in touch with families, typically?

• And length of support? Over what time period are they in touch with families?
• How has the ongoing support they offer families changed over time? More / less now compared with earlier stages of GH? If different, why? What led to change?
• How do they decide when to ‘close’ a case / when they no longer need to work with families?
• Which families do you tend to have most involvement with?
• Do you think there is any pattern to this, in terms of either their needs or their characteristics – i.e. are there some families who don’t engage much after first contact or after their HNA?
• What are the reasons why you / GH might have less engagement with some families?

Probe if necessary

• Any issues relating to resources (e.g. lack of staff time)?
• Any issues around family attitudes towards seeking/accepting support?
• Any other reasons/barriers?
• What, if anything, do you feel you have learned about what works to keep families who need it engaged with support over time?
• What, if anything, could you / others do differently to engage families (and keep them engaged)?

Support for families

Thinking about the families GH has worked with, can you talk me through how you work with them, including the different types of advice or support they have been offered, and by which organisations?

Probe around:

• Issues they’ve been supported with – employment, education/training, benefits/grants, food, fuel, childcare, housing, mental health/wider health and wellbeing, anything else?
• Does the type of support the families you work with need to change over time? How? Why?
• How far are you seeing individual families moving on from coming in with crisis issues (food, bills, housing) to looking at longer-term changes (employment / training)?
• Way support has been offered – e.g. to what extent does support involve:
• GH/ other NWD network staff directly helping them access what they need (e.g. help with form filling, direct provision of support or advice)?
• GH staff referring them to other services?
• How do you decide what support to offer families?
• How far is it based on responding to specific asks, vs. GH identifying needs and suggesting things they might find helpful?
• Are there any restrictions on the support that GH are able to offer? (e.g. by time, resource, knowledge of what’s available, eligibility criteria, KPIs, etc.)
• How far has the balance of the support you are providing as a service, changed over time, particularly with regards to support for families with children?
• Any changes to the focus of support – what topics/issues they’re providing most support around?
• Any changes to how they provide support – e.g. balance between direct support/advice and onward referrals?
• Any other changes?
• Probe on reasons for any changes.
• Referral processes
• Which services, or which types of services, do you refer families to most often?
• How do onward referrals work? Is it different depending on different services?
• Does GH follow up once a referral has been made to find out what has happened? With the family or with the service?
• Overall, how well do you think referral processes for families in Glasgow are currently working? What are the most important factors in this?

Outcomes

• What are your overall reflections on how effective you think the GH approach is as a means of engaging and supporting families with children on low incomes?
• How different is what GH is doing from what was available for families in Glasgow previously?

Outcomes for families

• What difference is GH / network making in general, and for families? Where do you feel GH has been able to make most difference to families with children?
• Are there areas where you feel it has been harder to help or make a difference so far?

Probe around:

• Whether there are particular issues families face you feel you have been able to make more / less of a difference on so far?

If not mentioned, probe around:

• Helping them access (better) work/training;
• improving their income from benefits;
• helping with cost-of-living issues;
• and wider issues like confidence and health and wellbeing. (both parents and children)
• Are there particular types of families it’s been easier or harder to make a difference for? (e.g. probe re. TCPDP family types)
• What elements of how GH is set-up or delivered do you think have worked well / are most effective in engaging and supporting families with children in particular?

What have been the main challenges or barriers to being able to achieve positive outcomes for families? Probe if necessary, e.g.

• Availability of other services?
• GH staff time?
• Families’ feelings about accessing services?
• Data sharing issues?
• Wider benefits system?
• Anything else?
• How easy or difficult is it to manage targeting support to low-income families and offering a GH helpline service to the wider Glasgow population?

What would you say is the balance of time you spend on low-income families with children vs. wider case load? Has this changed over time?

What are the main things you have learned from GH / the wider PF about how to improve outcomes for families with children that you would share with other areas?

Outcomes for wider ‘system’ / services

• Thinking now about wider services that help support low-income families with children
• Has GH been able to link with other services that can support families with children? If yes, which services?
• How well does this joint-working work? (for staff with more of a developmental or management role: what facilitated these improved links?)
• Where are there gaps / services that could work more effectively together for families but don’t at the moment?
• Why? What are the barriers to joint working? (e.g. probe on time/resource if not covered)
• In your experience, has GH and the wider PF activity/ network made any difference to how other services work with families with children?
• If yes, what difference? Which services? How was this achieved / how did GH influence these services?
• What are the things you think still need to change in terms of how services work in order to better meet the needs of families in Glasgow?
• If other services made those changes, do you think there would still be a need for GH or not? Why?

Suggested improvements and future

• What, if anything, would you change about GH or the wider PF to help it make more of a difference to outcomes for families with children?
• From what you know, how, if at all, do you expect GH/ NWD network to change or evolve in the next 6-12 months? (for development / manager-level interviewees:
• And how, if at all, do you see the wider PF changing or evolving?
• Do you think GH’s role within the wider PF is changing or will change? If yes, how?
• And are there other ways in which you think GH or the wider PF SHOULD change, to better meet the PF’s aims for families or system change?

Thank you and ending interview

• Is there anything else you would like to add?
• Do you have any questions about the research?
• Are you happy to be quoted anonymously in any reports?
• Check contact details for sharing copy of notes.

Child Poverty Pathfinder – Wave 1 professional stakeholder interviews discussion guide – Non-Glasgow Helps operational staff

Notes

• This is a topic guide, not a questionnaire – it is a guide to steer the conversation to ensure relevant topics are covered appropriately, with suggestions of questions that might be useful. It is not expected that interviewers will ask every question, and interviews may not proceed linearly – interviewers will follow up on issues raised by participants as appropriate.
• You will be interviewing stakeholders in a range of different roles with respect to the Pathfinder. This version of the topic guide includes questions we think are more likely to be relevant to operational staff – Glasgow Helps Key Workers, and other family-facing staff from referral/ partner organisations. There are separate topic guides for Glasgow strategic staff and other senior stakeholders.

Summary of key aims/topics for interview:

Across the professional stakeholder interviews, we want to find out:

• Whether and how professionals think Glasgow Helps in particular - including support from other orgs accessed via GH - and the PF as a whole is delivering impacts for families in poverty, and
• Whether and how the PF is delivering system change
• With a focus on understanding barriers, facilitators, and lessons for future roll-out (locally and in other areas of Scotland)
• Each topic guide covers all three, though this topic guide is more focused on delivery and impacts for families.

Introduction

• Introduce self and Ipsos
• Check in with how they are. Is now still an OK time to speak to us?
• Introduce the research: The Scottish Government has commissioned Ipsos to evaluate the Child Poverty Pathfinders in Dundee and Glasgow.

We’re taking a multi-method approach to this, including both quant data (using monitoring data from GH and potentially other data collected about other parts of the PF) and qual data, including interviews with families and with professionals – which is where you come in.

We’re doing qual interviews in two main waves, in addition to the early interviews we did at the scoping phase – this is wave 1, wave 2 will be later in the year in Autumn. We know that GH isn’t the only element of the PF, but as there’s interest in what other areas can learn from the GH model, we agreed to focus on GH in the first wave of fieldwork. Wave 2 will focus more on new elements of the PF, like the focused work in wards with high levels of child poverty.

• Discuss anonymity and confidentiality.
• Won’t use any names in the report. If we use quotes in the report, they will be anonymous.
• Hope they will feel able be open in your answers, as the learning from this will hopefully help inform improvements across Scotland.
• BUT, we are aware that offering concrete guarantees of confidentiality is very difficult in this context as are only certain people working in particular roles and may be obvious who you are from what you say.
• So we will share our notes on the interview with you after the interview, and you can let us know if there is anything you would rather wasn’t included or wouldn’t want to be quoted on.
• Remind participant(s) that they don’t have to answer any questions they don’t want to answer, and that they are welcome to stop the interview at any time.
• Discuss how long the interview will last (and how long they have)
• Request permission to record – this in case my notes are unclear and I need to go back and check anything. The recording will not be shared with anyone outside the research team and will be securely deleted after the research is complete.
• Any questions before we start?
• At start of recording – I just need to confirm for the record that you are giving verbal consent that you are happy to take part in this interview, and happy for the interview to be recorded for Ipsos to listen back to.

About the participant and their role on the PF

To start off with, it would be helpful if you could if you could very briefly tell me a bit about the service you work for, your role, and your involvement with Glasgow Helps.

If necessary, prompt on:

• What does your service do? What kinds of support does it offer people?
• What is your day-to-day role? How does your involvement in the PF / Glasgow Helps fit into this?
• How much of your time is spent on working with Glasgow Helps?
• How long have you worked with Glasgow Helps? (Is this the same for their organisation?)

Current understanding of the PF

Before I ask you about working with GH in more detail, just wanted to ask if you are aware of the Glasgow Child Poverty Pathfinder?

If yes (don’t spend long on this):

• What is your current understanding of what the Pathfinder is/what it includes?
• What do you see as the PF’s main aims? (Probe if time on outcomes for families & system change)

Referrals to/from Glasgow Helps

Thanks. I’d like to ask now about how the referral process works between you and Glasgow Helps.

First contact

• Can you describe briefly what happens at the very beginning of the process, when [you first refer someone to GH / someone is first referred to you by GH]?
• Who manages the referral on their side / at GH? (What are their roles?)
• What is the mode of referral? (Telephone/form etc.)
• What is the client’s experience of the referral process?
• Who does the client speak to?
• What kinds of information is the client asked for [if known]?
• What kinds of support or information are they typically given?
• Is the referral process any different for families you identify as having children under 16, or is it similar for everyone that you support?

Reach

• Who tends to get referred? [either from or to GH]
• Balance between families with children and other types of households?
• Has this balance changed over time? If yes, how?
• Reasons behind this?
• In terms of families with children, are there any patterns in terms of who gets referred most often?
• E.g. types of families? Or types of needs?

Probe on TCPDP groups:

Families with 3+ children, families with children under 1, families with young mothers, families with a disabled family member, single parents, families from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Assessment of needs – for those who refer into GH:

• Could you talk us through how you assess / decide who should be referred to GH?
• How do you introduce this idea to them?
• When families with children don’t want to be referred, what do they tell you about this?
• Are there particular families that are easier / harder to engage with referral? (e.g. in terms of their needs / family type)

Probe on TCPDP groups

• Is there any learning from your experience about what works well or not so well to engage families? Any differences by TCPD groups?

Assessment of needs – for those who receive referrals from GH:

• Could you talk us through how you assess people’s needs once they have been referred to you?
• Are there particular families that are easier / harder to engage with once they have been referred? E.g. in terms of their needs or family type.

Probe on TCPDP groups

• Is there any learning from your experience about what works well or not so well to engage families? Any differences by TCPDP groups?
• Are there any particular groups of families you feel are missing or don’t tend to get referred / follow up on their referrals?

Probe on TCPDP groups

• If yes: Why do you think they don’t?
• Is there anything that might help engage them?
• Are there any cases where you don’t accept a referral? If so, why?
• What would happen next?

For all:

• Overall, how well do you think referral processes with GH for families are currently working?
• What are the most important factors in this?
• Is there anything you think could be improved to make the referral process more effective for families?
• If other areas were looking to set up a similar referral process, what advice/learning would you share with them?

Ongoing engagement with GH families

• Can you tell me a bit more about how you work with families after their referral to/from GH?
• What kinds of contact do you have with them?
• Mode? (face-to-face appointments, telephone, text)
• Frequency of contact / Length of support?
• How do you decide when to ‘close’ a case / when you no longer need to work with families?
• Does the type of support you offer families change [once they have been referred to GH] [at all over time]?
• If so, how? More / less?
• If different, why?
• How, if at all, has working with Glasgow Helps changed the way you work with families on an ongoing basis?

Those receiving referrals from GH: Does GH follow up once a referral has been made to find out what has happened?

• With the family or with the service?

Those receiving referrals from GH: Which families from GH do you tend to have most involvement with? (probe on family types/needs)

• Is this different compared to other clients/clients more generally?
• What are the reasons why you might have less ongoing engagement with some families?

Probe if necessary:

• Any issues relating to resources (e.g. lack of staff time)?
• Any issues around family attitudes towards seeking/accepting support?
• Any other reasons/barriers?
• What, if anything, do you feel you have learned about what works to keep families who need it engaged with support over time?
• What, if anything, could you / others do differently to engage families (and keep them engaged)?

Working in partnership with GH

• Overall, how would you describe your relationship with GH?
• Has your relationship changed over time? In what way?
• What is it about GH that supports close partnership working, if anything?
• Have there been any challenges to working with GH?

Outcomes of GH

• What are your overall reflections on how effective you think the GH approach is as a means of engaging and/or supporting families with children on low incomes?
• How different is what GH is doing from what was available for families in Glasgow previously?

Outcomes for families

• What difference, if any, do you think GH is making for families?
• Where do you feel GH has been able to make most difference?
• Are there areas where you feel it has been harder to help or make a difference so far?
• Are there are particular issues families face you feel it has been able to make more / less of a difference on so far (and why)?
• e.g. If not mentioned, probe on:
• helping them access (better) work/training;
• improving their income from benefits;
• helping with cost-of-living issues;
• and wider issues like confidence and health and wellbeing. (both parents and children)
• What is it about how GH is set-up or delivered that has contributed to this?
• What have been the main challenges or barriers to being able to achieve positive outcomes for families referred to/from GH?
• GH staff time?
• Time and resource within your own service?
• Families’ feelings about accessing services?
• Data sharing issues?
• Wider issues, e.g. benefits system?
• What are the main things you have learned from working with GH about how to improve outcomes for families with children that you would share with other areas?

Outcomes for wider ‘system’ / services

• What difference, if any, has working with GH changed the way you work as an organisation?
• How they work with families directly?
• How they carry out referrals with other organisations?
• Impacts on partnership working more broadly?
• Has GH and the PF made any difference to how your service works with families with children?
• If yes: what are you doing differently and why?
• What about other services – have you noticed any changes in how they approach working with families with children?
• What are the things you think still need to change in terms of how services work in order to better meet the needs of families in Glasgow?

Suggested improvements

• What, if anything, would you change about GH to help it work better / make more of a difference for families?
• Is there anything they should do more/less of?

Wrap up

Is there anything else you would like to add about your experience working with GH, or supporting families with children more broadly, that you would like to share?

• Do you have any questions about the research at this stage?
• Are you happy to be quoted anonymously in any reports?

Check contact details for sharing copy of notes.

Child Poverty Pathfinder – Wave 2 family interviews discussion guide – ILMs

Summary of key topics to cover:

• Informed consent – ensuring that they understand what is involved, how their data will be used, the voluntary nature of taking part, and that it won’t impact on any services they might receive. Record consent to take part and (if agree) be audio-recorded.
• Background information about the participant – making sure they are a family with children <16, family characteristics, current socio-economic status, that they have been involved in ILM [are currently employed in Govan Help foodbanks or involved in other ILM].

‘Story’ of their engagement with NWD over time, and ILM including:

• Initial engagement – who they first had contact with, identification of needs; if referred, how did the conversation about referral come up
• Support needs – what issues were they facing when first had contact with NWD organisation? (explore nature/range of issues and impact they were having) Had they sought support from elsewhere (if yes, what happened, if no, why not)? What did they hope to get from NWD org? What kinds of support were they offered and what have they taken up?
• Comparison with other service experiences – to touch on things like ease of access, timeliness of support, levels of contact/communication, how comfortable they felt in discussing their support needs
• Becoming engaged in ILM – how did the topic come up – were they looking for employability support or was it suggested to them? How did they feel when it was discussed; how was the application process; how long did the process take; whether any follow up from original organisation engaged with
• Experience of the ILM training and job – how they’ve found the training (how accessible, useful etc); barriers/facilitators to engagement.
• What difference the NWD process has made in terms of accessing support – have they accessed support they didn’t know was available before / wouldn’t have known how to access / wouldn’t have accessed for any other reason e.g. confidence, resources, time; has the initial NWD referral led to any other referrals?
• Accessibility of support – views on ease/difficulty of getting the support they need from NWD organisations engaged with, and what might make it easier.
• Outcomes for families – views on what has changed for them & their family as result of NWD and ILM – probing in particular on impacts on employment/training and feelings about work, financial situation, and quality of life.
• Suggestions for improvement / other feedback
• Consent to recontact, thank you vouchers [explain expiry and process] and finish.

Section 1: Introduction and consent

Aim: to make sure we gain informed consent from participant before taking part including consent for recording.

• Thank participant for taking part and introduce yourself and Ipsos Scotland.
• Check they got an information sheet and check if they need it in another language or format, or would like you to go over it with them in detail? Do they have any questions on any aspect? Then let them know you will go over the key points.
• Remind participant/s of the aims of the research:
• The Scottish Government has asked us, Ipsos Scotland (an independent research organisation), to get feedback from families about their experiences of being referred to different organisations for support in Glasgow. The aim of the research is to find out what went well and what could be done better in future. We’ll also be speaking to people who help organise and deliver the support services. Once we have spoken to everyone, we’ll write a report summarising what everyone has said and that will be published by the Scottish Government.
• Provide reassurances of anonymity and confidentiality:
• It will not be possible for the Scottish Government to know who took part in the research.
• We will include quotes in the report, but these would be anonymous. No identifying information about individuals or families (e.g. names or contact details) will be passed on to anyone outside the research team (me and my colleagues at Ipsos).
• Remind participant that the interview will last around 30-45 minutes and that they will receive a thank you voucher which you will sort out at the end of the discussion.
• Remind participant that there are no right or wrong answers. It’s really useful to hear what could have been done better as well as what went well.
• Emphasise that taking part is completely voluntary - they don’t have to answer any questions they don’t want to answer and can decide to stop the interview at any point. Taking part – or not – won’t affect the support they get.
• Remind that they are free to change their mind and decide not to take part at any time before or during the interview, or after the interview until the findings have been written up.
• Check if participant has any questions.

Note: Spend time making sure interviewee understands what the interview is about and what we/the Scottish Government will do with the information. Offer to go through information sheet if necessary.

• Request permission to record interview. Explain that this is so we can listen back to what they’ve said to make sure we understood it correctly, and that recordings will not be shared outside the research team at Ipsos.
• That’s recording us now. Could I quickly ask you to confirm for the recording that you are happy to take part based on the information we just discussed, and that you’re happy to be recorded for Ipsos to listen back to?

Section 2 – Background/building rapport

Aim: to build rapport and gain understanding of participant’s life.

• First of all, could you tell me a bit about yourself?
• What area of Glasgow do you live in? Have you lived there long?
• Who do you live with?
• How do you spend your time in a typical week?

Section 3 – Initial referral to / engagement with NWD

Aim: explore initial engagement with NWD

• I’m interested in how you originally accessed support through [ILM].
• How did you find out about them? (Check if referred by someone else)
• How long ago was that?
• What was your situation at the time? What kinds of challenges / issues were you facing when you first had contact with [ILM]?
• What impacts were these issues having for you and your family?
• How urgent did your situation feel when you first contacted [ILM] Did you feel like you needed immediate support, or were you looking for longer-term assistance?
• Did you have in mind the types of support you were looking for when you came to [ILM]?
• What type of support did [ILM] offer you?
• And did you take up that support?
• Had you asked anyone else for help with these things before you came to [ILM]?
• What happened when you asked for help previously?
• Were you out of work at the time of getting in touch? If yes: for how long?
• What challenges/barriers were you facing in terms of employment at that stage?
• Can you tell me about whether you were getting support from any other organisations when the job opportunity came up?
• [If multiple mentioned, clarify which organisation introduced them to the ILM - if they can’t remember, try to get as much info as they can recall about how they found out about the opportunity then don’t ask questions asking specifically about referral org]

Section 4 – Engagement with NWD partner and comparison with other services

Aim: To gain an overview of extent / nature of contact with NWD partner since first referral, and how this might compare to other services – whether the NWD model has made a difference to families’ experiences of the system

It would be great to hear a bit more about your experience of getting help from [NWD org] generally since that first contact. And then I’ll go on to ask you specifically about the job you’re now in.

• First, can you tell me a bit about what accessing support through [NWD org] has involved for you?
• Since you first got in touch, how often have you had contact / how many times have you been in touch with anyone from [NWD org]?
• What kinds of contact do you have with them? Text, phone calls, emails? In person? (where?)
• Do you contact them, or do they contact you, or a mix?
• If relevant: Do you usually speak to the same person, or does it vary?
• How do you find speaking to them?
• Have you been in touch with [NWD partner] more/less often at different points in time since you first contacted them?
• If not already clear: what kind of support have you received from [NWD org]? (advice, other referrals/signposting and experience of that, financial support etc?)
• How easy or difficult have you found it to access the help you have needed through [NWD org]?
• How do you feel about the amount of contact you have had with [NWD org]?
• Would you like to have more / less contact?
• If more - what sorts of things would you like more contact about?
• How often would you like to have contact with them, ideally?
• Are you happy with the type of contact you have with them? (e.g. would they like to be able to contact them in different ways?)
• Do you think you would have been able to access the same support if you hadn’t accessed / been referred to [Govan Help / other organisation]?
• If yes: Where else do they think they could have received the same support – what type and who from? What makes them think that?
• If no: probe for detail on probe for detail on why not. (e.g. confidence, resources, time, awareness). Probe for detail on what they wouldn’t have accessed otherwise; and the positive impacts they have experienced from specific examples of support.
• How did the process of building a relationship with [Govan Help/ other organisation] compare with your experience of other support services you may have been involved with? Was it different in any way? If so, how?
• Levels of contact/communication
• Issues they could get support with
• How comfortable they felt in discussing their support needs

If referred between organisations: probe on experience of referral, level of admin involved etc

• Have they accessed support they didn’t know was available before / wouldn’t have known how to access / wouldn’t have accessed for any other reason e.g. confidence, resources, time; has the initial NWD referral led to any other referrals?

If did not engage with an org for long:

• Why did you decide not to stay in touch with [NWD org]?
• Were there any barriers or issues that meant it was hard for you to use [org]? E.g. money, timing, other commitments, etc?
• Was there anything in particular that was off putting about the approach [NWD org] took in offering you support?
• Were you looking for a different type of assistance than what you were offered? If yes: probe for detail on what participant was looking for and why the support offered didn’t meet their needs

Section 5 – Training and ILM experience; and outcomes

Aim: explore experience of the ILM

Thanks for the discussion so far. I’d like to move on to specifically talk about your experiences of training and working with [ILM].

• How did you first find out about the opportunity to work at [ILM]?
• What did you first think about it when it was mentioned to you?
• Did it seem like a good fit for what you were: interested in? experienced in?
• Why did you decide to take up the opportunity?
• If not mentioned: probe on whether they had any longer-term goals in mind
• Can you tell me about the training programme?
• What did it involve?
• What level of time commitment did it require?
• How well did it fit in with your life/other time commitments? Was there any flexibility in when you completed the training?
• How well, if at all, do you think the training equipped you for the job you are doing [with ILM] now?
• Is there anything you think could have been improved regarding the training programme?
• And how has your experience of the job been?
• How long have you worked there now?
• What sort of skills have you developed through the job?
• How long is your current contract?
• Will you look for another job after that time?
• Would you stay in the same type of work?
• Do you feel more able to get a job than before?

If not obvious from discussions already, probe:

• Are there any particular barriers / challenges you would still face in being able to take up another job?
• Is there any type of support that would enable you to consider moving into employment at some point in the future?
• Can you tell me how, if at all, this experience of training and working for [ILM] has changed things for you personally?

If not already mentioned, probe on:

• Employment / training status (see more detailed probes below)?
• Health / wellbeing?
• Housing situation?
• Confidence / how they feel about the future? (inc. how they feel about employment in the future, if not currently employed).
• Skills
• And for the rest of your family?
• Do you think the opportunity to work at [ILM] helped you with these changes? In what way?
• Has there been any change to your financial situation since you accessed support at [referee organisation] and [NWD partner]?

If participant seems comfortable talking about financial impacts:

• How manageable would you say you feel your financial situation is now? What would make it more manageable?
• Are there areas you feel you still need support with? Have you spoken to anyone about this?
• Do you think working with [referee organisation] and [NWD partner] helped you be better off?
• In what way [clarify if financially better off]?
• If financially better off: Have these income increases been via benefits or employment or costs savings? (probe for e.g. moving into work, changing jobs, working more hours, claiming new benefits)
• What do you think would have happened if you didn’t have this opportunity to work through [ILM]?
• Do you think you would have been able to get this help/support/training from somewhere else?

Probe for detail on why/where and who from, or why not

• Thinking about how things have changed for you, what difference has that made to you and to your family’s quality of life would you say?
• Have there been any changes that have not been positive, or that you didn’t expect when you first became involved in accessing support through / working in the job at Govan Help?

Section 6 - Summary & thoughts on improvement

Aim: overview of views of NWD/ILM and suggestions for improvement

• Overall, how would you summarise your experience of receiving a service from [NWD partner and being involved in the job at ILM]?
• If not covered: What do you think have been the key benefits for you? (and your family?)
• What is it about that, that has made the most difference to you/your family?

(Probe on how this has made a difference - accessible, affordable, flexible?)

• How (if at all) could job opportunity/training programme at [ILM] be improved?

Probe on accessibility, training, support, job role, structure etc

• How (if at all) could [NWD org / ILM] be improved?
• Is there any other help, support or advice you think they could provide, that would improve the service they offer? Any other types of referrals you think might be lacking?
• Is there anything you particularly like that you would like to see more of?
• Anything there could be less of?
• How could people organising similar projects in future encourage more people with families like you to take up support?
• Any final thoughts/feedback you think it would be useful for us to know?

Section 7 - Wrap up and re-contact

That’s everything I wanted to ask you today, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it. I’ll stop the recording now [stop recording].

Consent to recontact form:

Just to remind you, we’ll be writing a report to summarise everything you and others have told us about services in Glasgow. It will be published on the Scottish Government website, so you’ll be able to search for it and read it if you’re interested. It will probably be published Spring 2025.

If you would like, we can send you a link to the report when it’s published. If so, we’ll keep your name and email or postal address for this purpose and wait to securely delete it until after we’ve sent you the link to the report.

If yes, complete contact details sheet and add to secure spreadsheet.

Thank you voucher: Check whether prefer Amazon voucher or L2S – make sure they sign receipt for this.

That’s everything from me. Do you have any questions before we finish?

Thank and close.

Child Poverty Pathfinder – Wave 2 family interviews discussion guide – NWD families

Summary of key topics to cover:

• Informed consent – ensuring that they understand what is involved, how their data will be used, the voluntary nature of taking part, and that it won’t impact on any services they might receive. Record consent to take part and (if agree) to be audio-recorded.
• Background information about the participant – making sure they are a family with children <16, that they have been involved with NWD organisation, family characteristics, current socio-economic status

‘Story’ of their engagement with NWD over time, including:

• Initial engagement – who they first had contact with, identification of needs; were they referred elsewhere straight away or were they engaged with GH/other org first e.g. with an HSO; how did the conversation about referral come up
• Support needs – what issues were they facing when first had contact with referral org/NWD org (explore nature/range of issues and impact they were having)? Had they sought support from elsewhere (if yes, what happened, if no, why not)? What did they hope to get from referral org/NWD partner?
• Experience of referral process to NWD partner – how did they feel when referred; how long did it take before they were contacted by the NWD partner; how was the initial conversation with the organisation they were referred to (e.g. did they need to discuss their entire situation all over again?); whether any follow up on referrals from initial organisation they had contact with
• Further / ongoing engagement – what/when/how/how much contact they’ve had with NWD organisation, reasons/views on level of engagement, barriers/facilitators to engagement.
• What difference the NWD process has made in terms of accessing support – have they accessed support they didn’t know was available before / wouldn’t have known how to access / wouldn’t have accessed for any other reason e.g. confidence, resources, time; has the initial NWD referral led to any other referrals?
• Comparison with other service experiences – to touch on things like ease of access, timeliness of support, levels of contact/communication, how comfortable they felt in discussing their support needs
• Accessibility of support – views on ease/difficulty of getting the support they need from NWD organisations and what might make it easier.
• Outcomes for families – views on what has changed for them & their family as result of contact with NWD organisations – probing in particular on impacts on employment/training and feelings about work, financial situation, and quality of life. If helpful, what is it about the support that has made the difference to them? What, if anything, was less helpful/didn’t work? How does experience of NWD organisations compare with other services they’ve had experience of?
• Suggestions for improvement / other feedback
• Consent to recontact, thank you vouchers [explain expiry and process] and finish.

Section 1: Introduction and consent

Aim: to make sure we gain informed consent from participant before taking part including consent for recording.

• Thank participant for taking part and introduce yourself and Ipsos Scotland.
• Check they got an information sheet and check if they need it in another language or format, or would like you to go over it with them in detail? Do they have any questions on any aspect? Then let them know you will go over the key points.
• Remind participant/s of the aims of the research:

The Scottish Government has asked us, Ipsos Scotland (an independent research organisation), to get feedback from families about their experiences of being referred to different organisations for support in Glasgow. The aim of the research is to find out what went well and what could be done better in future. We’ll also be speaking to people who help organise and deliver some support services. Once we have spoken to everyone, we’ll write a report summarising what everyone has said and that will be published by the Scottish Government.

• Provide reassurances of anonymity and confidentiality:
• It will not be possible for the Scottish Government to know who took part in the research.
• We will include quotes in the report, but these would be anonymous. No identifying information about individuals or families (e.g. names or contact details) will be passed on to anyone outside the research team (me and my colleagues at Ipsos).
• Remind participant that the interview will last around 30-45 minutes and that they will receive a thank you voucher which you will sort out at the end of the discussion.
• Remind participant that there are no right or wrong answers. It’s really useful to hear what could have been done better as well as what went well.
• Emphasise that taking part is completely voluntary - they don’t have to answer any questions they don’t want to answer and can decide to stop the interview at any point. Taking part – or not – won’t affect the support they get.
• Remind that they are free to change their mind and decide not to take part at any time before or during the interview, or after the interview until the findings have been written up.
• Check if participant has any questions.

Note: Spend time making sure interviewee understands what the interview is about and what we/the Scottish Government will do with the information. Offer to go through information sheet if necessary.

• Request permission to record interview. Explain that this is so we can listen back to what they’ve said to make sure we understood it correctly, and that recordings will not be shared outside the research team at Ipsos.
• That’s recording us now. Could I quickly ask you to confirm for the recording that you are happy to take part based on the information we just discussed, and that you’re happy to be recorded for Ipsos to listen back to?

Section 2 – Background/building rapport

Aim: to build rapport and gain understanding of participant’s life.

• To start with, could you tell me a bit about yourself?
• What area of Glasgow do you live in? Have you lived there long?
• Who do you live with? Check ages of children.
• How do you spend your time in a typical week?
• If not clear, check if they are working, studying or volunteering at the moment and probe for details – where? what? full time/part-time? how long have they been doing that for?

Section 3 – Initial referral to / engagement with NWD partner

Aim: explore initial engagement processes

• I’m interested to hear about how you came to end up accessing support through [NWD organisation that flagged participant for interview]
• How did you first find out about [NWD partner]? (Check if referred by GH/someone else)
• Were you referred by another organisation or individual, or did you find out about them on your own?
• And how long ago was that?

If referred:

• Did this happen straight away when you spoke to [GH/referee organisation], or did you get different types of support from them first?
• Were you aware of [NWD org] already, or was the first time you heard about them when you got referred?
• If already aware of them: had you contacted them before? If not: had you thought about contacting them before? Why/why not? Why did you decide not to contact them?
• Could you tell me about the conversation you had with [referee organisation] that led to them referring you to [NWD partner]?
• How comfortable did you feel having that initial conversation about your circumstances?
• How did you feel about the suggestion of being referred to [NWD partner]? (e.g. not sure why referred, stigma, pleased to be offered support?)
• Could you tell me a bit about the first conversation you had with [NWD partner]?
• How was the appointment/support organised? Did you get in touch with them, or them with you?
• How long did it take to set up the appointment/support after you discussed the referral with [referee organisation]?
• How do you feel about that (length of time)? How do you think it compares with other support services you have been involved with before, if any?
• Did [NWD partner] already have information about your situation or did you need to talk through everything again?
• Probe for whether the same level of detail was needed second time round/whether they had to go over everything for a second time, or whether this was made easier for them by the NWD approach
• Was there much admin involved in getting started with [NWD partner]?
• Overall, how easy did you find the process of setting up the initial contact with [NWD partner]?
• Did [referee organisation] follow up with you to check how the referral/your appointment had gone with [NWD partner]?
• How do you feel about the level of follow-up with the referral? If relevant: did you feel supported in the process?
• Did [referee organisation] keep in touch with you after that?
• Are there any other services you’ve been referred/signposted to by [referee organisation] that you have been in touch with?
• If yes: Could you tell me a bit about what that has involved for you? Have you received support from them? Probe on what types of support received, and experience of accessing it
• Are there any other services you’ve been referred/signposted to by [referee organisation] that you haven’t been in touch with yet? What/why/not? Probe on barriers.
• Do you plan to get in touch with any of these in the future? What/why/when?
• Overall, would you say the process of accessing support was easier or harder than you expected?
• How (if at all) could the process of being referred between these specific organisations be improved?
• How do you feel about receiving support from multiple organisations, compared with just being in contact with one?

If not referred, found nwd organisation by some other means:

• Had you contacted [NWD org] before? If not: had you thought about contacting them before? Why/why not? Why did you decide not to contact them?
• How long did it take to get support after you contacted them?
• How do you feel about that [length of time]? How do you think it compares with other support services you have been involved with before, if any?
• Could you tell me a bit about the first conversation you had with [NWD partner]?
• How was the appointment/support organised? Did you get in touch with them, or them with you?
• How did they figure out what your support needs were?
• How easy or difficult did you find it to speak to them about your circumstances and support needs?

Section 4 – Engagement with NWD partner and comparison with other services

Aim: To gain an overview of extent / nature of contact with NWD partner since first referral, and how this might compare to other services – whether the NWD model has made a difference to families’ experiences of the system

It would be great to hear a bit more about your experience of getting help from [NWD partner] since that first contact.

• Can you tell me a bit about what that has involved for you?
• Since you first got in touch, how often have you had contact / how many times have you been in touch with anyone from [NWD partner]?
• What kinds of contact do you have with them? Text, phone calls, emails? In person? (where?)
• Do you contact them, or do they contact you, or a mix?
• If relevant: Do you usually speak to the same person, or does it vary?
• How do you find speaking to them?
• Have you been in touch with [NWD partner] more/less often at different points in time since you first contacted them?
• How do you feel about the amount of contact you have had with [NWD partner]?
• Would you like to have more / less contact?
• If more - what sorts of things would you like more contact about?
• How often would you like to have contact with them, ideally?
• Are you happy with the type of contact you have with them? (e.g. would they like to be able to contact them in different ways?)
• How did the process of building a relationship with [NWD partner] compare with your experience of other support services you may have been involved with? Was it different in any way? If so, how?
• Levels of contact/communication
• Issues they could get support with
• How comfortable they felt in discussing their support needs

If did not engage with nwd organisation for long:

• Why did you decide not to stay in touch with [NWD org]?
• Were there any barriers or issues that meant it was hard for you to access support from [NWD org]? E.g. money, timing, other commitments, etc?
• Was there anything in particular that was off putting about the approach [NWD org] took in offering you support?
• Were you looking for a different type of assistance than what you were offered? If yes: probe for detail on what participant was looking for and why the support offered didn’t meet their needs

Section 5 – Support needs, relationship

Aim: to understand the needs they came to the project with, explore views on effectiveness of approaches to assessing needs, and relationship with NWD organisation staff

Initial support needs

• If you are happy to, can you tell me a bit more about the issues you were facing when you first had contact with [NWD org and/ or referring org]?
• What kinds of challenges / issues were you looking for support with when you first had contact with [NWD partner]? (eg housing, mental health, financial support)
• What impacts were these issues having for you and your family?
• If not already clear: what kind of support have you received from [NWD org]? (advice, other referrals, financial support etc?)
• How easy or difficult have you found it to access support through [NWD org]?
• Had you asked anyone else for help with these things before you came to [referee organisation] and got referred to [NWD org]? What happened when you asked for help previously?
• If relevant: What sort of relationship would you say you have with the staff at [NWD org]?
• How helpful have you found the support that they have offered you?
• Is there anything that [NWD org] has not been able to help you with?

Section 6 - Outcomes for families

Aim: to explore perceived outcomes for families

Key outcomes: impact on employment and wellbeing

What, if anything, would you say has changed for you as a result of your contact with [NWD organisation and support services more generally, if participant has been engaged with multiple organisations]

• What has changed for you personally?
• Has anything changed for the rest of your family, including your children?

If not already mentioned, probe on:

• Employment / training status (see more detailed probes below)?
• Access to childcare?
• Health / wellbeing?
• Housing situation?
• Confidence / how they feel about the future? (inc. how they feel about employment in the future, if not currently employed).
• Children’s wellbeing
• Skills
• Finances

For each, probe fully on:

• What role did [NWD organisation] play in that? What impact did they have? Did anything else have an impact on these changes?
• What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t been in touch with [referee organisation] and [NWD partner]?
• Do you think you would have been able to access the same support if you hadn’t accessed/been referred to [NWD org]?
• If yes: Where else do they think they could have received the same support – what type and who from? What makes them think that?
• If no: probe for detail on why not. (e.g. Confidence, resources, time, awareness). Probe for detail on what they wouldn’t have accessed otherwise; and the positive impacts they have experienced from specific examples of support.

Employment

How, if at all, has your work situation changed since you first came to/ worked with [NWD organisation]?

If in work:

• How long have you been in your work?
• If new role, did [NWD organisation involved with] or any of the services they put you in touch with, provide any support in getting that?
• Are you happy with your job?
• Would you like to make any changes?
• If so, have you been getting support with ways of doing that? Who from? What kind of support?

If not in work:

• Are you thinking about moving into employment at any point in the future?
• If so, have you been getting support with ways of doing that? Who from? What kind of support?
• Can you tell me more about that? (e.g. confidence boosting, job searching, skills training) How useful has that support been?

If work is not seen as an option in the foreseebale future:

• If not already clear: what are the main reasons you are not considering moving into employment in the future? Probe fully for barriers.
• Is there any type of support that would enable you to consider moving into employment at some point in the future?

All: Has there been any change to your financial situation since you accessed support at [referee organisation] and [NWD partner]?

• Have these income increases been via benefits or employment or costs savings? (probe for e.g. moving into work, changing jobs, working more hours, claiming new benefits)
• Do you think working with [referee organisation] and [NWD partner] helped you be better off? In what way [clarify if financially better off]?
• What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t been in touch with [referee organisation] and [NWD partner]? Do you think you would have been able to get help with this from somewhere else?

If yes: Where else do they think they could have received the same support – what type and who from? What makes them think that?

If no: probe for detail on why not. (e.g. Confidence, resources, time, awareness). Probe for detail on what they wouldn’t have accessed otherwise; and the positive impacts they have experienced from specific examples of support.

(If participant seems comfortable talking about financial impacts): How manageable would you say you feel your financial situation is now? What would make it more manageable? Are there areas you feel you still need support with? Have you spoken to [referee organisation if still in touch] / [NWD organisation] about this?

• Thinking about how things have changed for you, what difference has that made to you and to your family’s quality of life would you say?
• Have there been any changes that have not been positive, or that you didn’t expect when you first went to [referee organisation] and [NWD org] for support?

Section 7 - Summary & thoughts on improvement

Aim: overview of views of NWD organisations and suggestions for improvement

Overall, how would you summarise your experience of [referee organisation]?

And of [NWD partner]?

• If not covered: What do you think have been the key benefits for your family?
• What is it that has made the most difference to you/your family?

(Probe on how this has made a difference - accessible, affordable, flexible?)

• Do you feel that receiving the support from [NWD org] has had any impact on your confidence in dealing with the challenges that you/your family face? (probe on whether they feel they have more tools/skills/support to deal with the challenges they face.)
• How willing do you feel now to approach other support services for help if and when you need it? How does that compare to how willing you would have felt before accessing support through [NWD org]?
• How (if at all) could the support provided by [NWD org] be improved?
• Is there any other help, support or advice you think [NWD org] could provide, that would improve the service they offer to families with children in particular?
• Is there anything you particularly like that you would like to see more of?
• Anything there could be less of?
• How could people organising similar projects in future encourage more people with families like you to take up support?

If initially referred to NWD org:

• Is there any other help, support or advice you think [referee organisation] could provide, that would improve the service they offer to families with children in particular? Any other types of referrals you think might be lacking?
• Is there anything you particularly like that you would like to see more of?
• Anything there could be less of?
• How could people organising similar projects in future encourage more people with families like you to take up support?

Any final thoughts/feedback you think it would be useful for us to know?

Section 8 - Wrap up and re-contact

That’s everything I wanted to ask you today, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it. I’ll stop the recording now [stop recording].

Consent to recontact form:

Just to remind you, we’ll be writing a report to summarise everything you and others have told us about services in Glasgow. It will be published on the Scottish Government website, so you’ll be able to search for it and read it if you’re interested. It will probably be published Spring 2025.

If you would like, we can send you a link to the report when it’s published. If so, we’ll keep your name and email or postal address for this purpose and wait to securely delete it until after we’ve sent you the link to the report.

If yes, complete contact details sheet and add to secure spreadsheet.

Thank you voucher: Check whether prefer amazon voucher or L2S – make sure they sign receipt for this.

That’s everything from me. Do you have any questions before we finish?

Thank and close.

Child Poverty Pathfinder – Wave 2 Professional Stakeholder interviews discussion guide

Topic guide

Section 1: Informed consent

• Check if they’ve read the information sheet and then reiterate key points:
• What the research is about/who it’s for
• What we’ll do with their answers – writing a report, but anything we include will be anonymous – no names.
• However, obviously relatively small numbers of people in particular roles, so can’t guarantee won’t be identifiable.
• If they feel that something they’ve said could itself be identifying and they would rather we didn’t refer directly to this in the report let us know.
• Offer to share notes after interview if they’d like to review.
• Voluntary – can stop interview at any time.
• Check if have any questions.
• Start recording - record consent to take part and (if agreed) to be audio-recorded.

Section 2: Background information

Skip for repeat interviews after checking if anything has changed

• Can you tell us about your organisation and its involvement or interest in the Glasgow PF? (skip if Glasgow staff)
• Overview of their role and links to PF
• How long they’ve been doing it?

Section 3: Progress with PF activities directly working with families

• How does service provision for families differ from pre-PF?
• What projects have been working directly with families, under the umbrella of the PF to the best of your knowledge? How are these progressing?
• What others are planned?

Demonstration of change projects

• Have you been directly involved in the development of any of these? (if not, and no knowledge of DoCs, skip)
• Do you have any views on relevance/ appropriateness
• Target groups
• Geographic areas
• Support element
• How innovative would you say these projects are (DoC and any other PF direct family work)?
• To what extent do you think they could have been developed without forgoing PF activity?
• Can you describe how their design has been informed by previous PF work, (e.g. NWD, Holistic person-centred approach, Data sharing, Partnership/ shared values, using data to design and target services, involving local community in co-design.
• To what extent would you say these PF activities are aligned or linked with other policy focus/ funded activities (e.g. Whole Family Wellbeing Funding Cash First pilot and a school aged childcare Early Adopter Community (Drumchapel and Carntyne)
• Can you tell us about any other place-based activities that have or are planned to take place under the remit of the PF? (skip if not relevant)
• How were these chosen?
• How sustainable to you think place-based activities are? Can you tell us how you think they could be sustained?

Additional Demonstration of Change Lead Questions

• Could tell me a bit about your role in the organisation, maybe before the demonstration of change project, and then now as you've moved into this new project.
• How did they get involved in the project? and in the NWD network?
• When did the demonstration change project start off then for you?
• What stage of delivery is it at?
• Have you been actively involved in the development and setup of the demonstrations of change project?

a. Can you tell me a bit about the process for developing the model, the approach?

b. the targeting?

c. Any other key elements of the project and who delivers what

• What does/will the support offer look like for families?

a. E.g. how they approach people, explain the offer, how they assess needs, how they’ll support/who will support families.

b. when in people’s journeys are they identifying need/ putting in support, try and get a sort of end to end overview of what supported by the project might look like – they may still be developing) where will support be offered (eg homes, venues, remotely etc)

• Scale?
• Who are the key target groups?

a. what support needs/ barriers do they experience?

b. How will you address them?

c. What sort of sources of data and evidence have you used to shape the project that you've got?

d. Rationale

e. Outcomes, short, med, longer term

• What input from the different work streams across the Child Poverty Pathfinder programme, and how these inputs have been used to shape and develop the demonstration of change project? (can prompt for key workstreams e.g. data insights for targeting/ understanding barriers, NWD, holistic approach, previous employability work)

Explore the link between what they’ve done as wider PF activities and the DoC projects

• e.g. child poverty dashboard can look at data on a local level and highlight families with children under 5, enables targeting. Likely doing this in Calton as well.
• e.g. holistic approach taken in GH, HNAs
• e.g. NWD partners coming together to create stronger partnerships/pathways – has that fed into the DoC projects?
• Barriers in implementing the DoC project? (e.g. access to data etc.)
• Will there be links/ a formal role for GH? If yes, what, if no, will they use similar approaches? Links to NWD partners?
• Citizen voice impact – how is that playing into development, delivery?
• Expectations around how far families are from employment, what kind of work they might have to do to get the ready, how long they might need, if they know what kind of benefits they receive?
• Any targets? How will they measure that?
• Plans for capturing data on VfM? Views on whether the PF has been a good use of money/could anything be done more efficiently?

Section 4: Progress with family-related outcomes

We think through Wave 1 we have found some qualitative evidence towards some short term outcomes being achieved for families in the NWD network (via Glasgow Helps), such as:

• Easier access to the right support
• Increased engagement with services
• Immediate/ basic needs met (e.g. accessing food, fuel, urgent housing needs)
• Underlying issues identified
• Is there any data source, other than GH monitoring data, that would provide evidence of these previous outcomes?

(Cover in light touch way if it becomes clear interviewee has no knowledge of direct family outcomes)

In terms of longer term outcomes, what evidence do you think there is about progress being made in the following areas for families on low incomes:

• Empowered to make change for themselves
• Moving into employment/ improved employment
• Financially, socially and emotionally secure
• Resilient and less reliant on services
• To what extent do you think the PF programme of work has contributed to any of this? Over what sorts of timescales are we likely to see some of these outcomes? How could we evidence them?
• More generally, what difference to you think the PF has made to families experiencing poverty so far?
• How do you measure this?
• What is the potential impact, and over what type of time horizon? Thinking about the ambitious 3 year target in the latest PID – how was this target developed? How will you measure progress?

Section 5: Progress with the PF – systems change activity

Thinking about the aspects of the PF that are more about system change and influencing how services work with families, can you tell me about:

• recent progress in the areas you are involved in
• new developments
• particular successes other areas could learn from

(probe for areas relevant to interviewee , eg policy alignment, funding flexibility, commissioning and procurement, data insights and use of data, data sharing, NWD, development of innovative approaches, shared performance measurement)

• How well are things working? Are there any challenges?
• (How) will this these activities ultimately have positive impact on: service provision? families?

Section 6: Progress with system change activities and outcomes

What are your views on the progress made on the following areas of PF activity:

(See list of interviewees to ask these questions)

• Can you tell us about the number and types of partners engaged in the programme and their level and type of engagement?
• To what extent have the key partners been involved? Are there any gaps in the partnerships? How will you fill these?
• How is it possible to measure progress in this area? (eg count of orgs signing up to NWD values, spread of orgs, comparison against plans and targets)
• Is there anything else beyond that to measure progress?

What do you think are some of the results of NWD partners coming together in this way? Eg:

• Improved trust between partners
• More effective joint working
• Shared culture/ values
• Professionals’ knowledge about the service landscape
• Better referrals/ warm referrals/ fewer referrals
• Improved pathways for families (how?)
• Are there any indicators you think could be used to measure progress in any of these areas we have been talking about?
• If the child poverty programme has the longer-term aim of having a fully integrated person centred NWD approach to supporting people, what evidence is there that this is being/will be realised? (eg families accessing support more easily/ quickly)
• How could we measure that? (current data, future plans to collect relevant data)

To what extent would you say this NWD approach has become:

• Embedded
• Is sustainable across partners
• Is supported by shared outcomes and performance frameworks
• How has the development of shared values across partners progressed?
• Did this work predate the PF?
• If and how has the PF catalysed it?
• Which partners have developed shared values?
• How was the cocreation facilitated?
• What were key elements that contributed to this? (eg events, workstreams, training?)
• What difference has having shared values made that you can see so far?

Employability

(See list of interviewees to ask these questions)

• Can you tell me about the impact of the two ILMs that were aimed at parents, as they have now drawn to a close?
• What worked well, and not so well. Lessons learned?

Outcomes for participants – employment, softer outcomes such as skills and confidence

• How sustainable would you say these outcomes will be (ie the extent to which barriers were overcome)
• What are future plans for employability initiatives?
• To what extent have these programme, plus wider PF work, influenced future plans for further employability work?
• How well do PF employability activities - now and those planned - align with or interact with wider employability policy initiatives and findings, such as No One Left Behind. Are SG and GCC approaches distinct from one another?
• Can you tell me about how you have been working with Economic Development colleagues in relation to this?

Services for families

(See list of interviewees to ask these questions)

• Either via NWD, or wider PF activities, can you tell me about progress with filling gaps in services for families on low incomes, to what extend has there been progress on this? E.g.
• Identifying gaps
• More comprehensive service provision, development of new services/ providers delivering in new areas
• Testing innovative ideas? Able to be scaled up?
• Is the NWD activity influencing these changes? How?

Data and Insights

(See list of interviewees to ask these questions)

• What changes have you seen in the last two to three years in terms of data available on child poverty in the city? (examples to probe for could be better awareness of where in the city particular concentrations of CP are, areas where there are particular barriers to employment/ accessing benefits/ financial support)
• What difference is having this insight making now, to the development or delivery of services? (re targeting effective person-centred services)
• Now
• Future

Data Sharing - data being used effectively (barriers to sharing overcome)

• Are there any examples of PF partners/ orgs across the city accessing/ using data in a way that enables them to deliver better/ more different services to support families on low incomes?
• Are there any particular barriers to this?
• What has the PF done to overcome these? What else could be done?

Commissioning and Procurement

(See list of interviewees to ask these questions)

• Can you tell me about progress with activities under the commissioning and procurement workstream?
• What sort of changes are being seen?
• How has commissioning processes changed – requirements, thresholds etc for tenderers?
• Have there been any changes to reporting requirements for service providers?
• Is collaboration being encouraged via commissioning/ procurement processes?
• How is the pathfinder work influencing these changes?

Governance

(See list of interviewees to ask these questions)

• Have you seen any changes re shared accountability
• E.g. partners sharing accountability for targets, spend, outcomes, something else?
• Are these changes what’s needed? Are others planned?
• Are you aware of any positive/ negative impacts of these?

Citizen engagement

Ask of all

• How important has the citizen voice been in the design or provision of projects/ services? What are the plans/ targets for this?
• How have you engaged citizens in PF work? How well does this work? (can you tell us about barriers, successes)
• To what extent do you think that this is becoming more embedded practice?

Section 7: Value for Money

(Ask of all)

Value for money is something evaluations factor in when considering how a programme has worked and what, if anything, they might do differently if they were thinking about setting up a similar programme somewhere else.

It’s too early to measure the long-term impacts of the PF activity, so not focusing on that. But we can explore other elements of VfM, like what resources are needed to deliver the programme, whether any of the costs could have been reduced without also reducing the impact, and whether any aspects of the NWD approach could have been delivered more efficiently.

Effectiveness – Is the policy having the intended effects and how are outputs being converted into outcomes?

Economy – What are the costs of the policy and are inputs being purchased at an appropriate quality and price?

Efficiency – How well are inputs being converted into outputs?

Equity – Who is benefiting from the policy and are target groups being reached? Is the distribution of impacts fair across income levels or protected characteristics?

Effectiveness:

• Firstly, to what extent would you say that Child Poverty Pathfinder as designed is an effective way (or is likely to be an effective way) for your organisation to achieve PF aims (reducing CP, improving services to families?
• What would you say any success is due to? E.g. the multi- agency change capacity team? Focusing on developing and trying new ideas? Particular delivery models? Something else?

Economy:

• What are the current or potential future costs for delivering the Child Poverty Programme:
• Probe on direct & indirect costs they are aware of– e.g. costs of multi-agency team, delivery costs, infrastructure set up, funding, human resource, networking
• Probe around range of strategic input to activities in the work stream over and above delivery (including research partnership with UoG)
• Probe around the range of partners and their input and adjacent activities – to what extent are their costs relevant to considerations on VfM?
• Probe around: Future – e.g. scalability, fixed costs versus costs that would grow with changes to scale
• For relevant interviewees: How does the Commissioning and Procurement workstream play into this? Is it in relation to costs? Efficiencies?

Efficiency:

i.e. how efficiently the relevant inputs were converted into the intended outputs.

• Has the pathfinder led to any efficiency gains? E.g. has it made it easier for other services to reach more people in need, or to better take-up of other services? Has the co-location of the multiagency team led to efficiency?
• Is the ‘funding flex’ that has managed to be achieved an example of efficiency? What sort of efficiencies did it lead to?
• Thinking about the different parts of the PF, are there any that you feel could have been delivered differently, or with less resource, but still have achieved the same (or better) impacts?
• Thinking about leadership and management of the programme, has this been at right level (in terms of who is involved and time spent) to manage the programme efficiently / effectively? If not, what would have worked better?

Equity:

i.e the extent to which the CPP programme met the needs of all relevant groups.

• To what extent would you say that the PF is reaching its target audience (families with children on low incomes)?
• We’re particularly interested in whether the PF has particularly impacted on any specific groups of families in poverty (mention some examples from below) and if so, what it is about the PF that enables this?
• Lone parent families
• Families where a family member has a disability
• Minority ethnic families
• Larger families with three or more children
• Families where mothers are younger than 25
• Families with a baby under 1 year old
• Any other types of families?
• To what extent are organisations getting the chance to participate equitably in the development of NWD, model, values, activities?
• How sustainable would you say the activities of the PF, and any impacts so far, will be?

Monitoring activities:

(If not covered earlier)

What data are available/ planned re measuring progress with

• NWD
• DoC projects
• ILM projects
• Other direct family work
• Other workstream work not directly with families

Wrap up and close

• Anything else they would like to share?
• Check if would like a copy of notes to review ahead our analysis (note in recruitment sheet)
• Check if any questions.
• Thank and close.

Child Poverty Pathfinder – Wave 2 Professional Stakeholder interviews discussion guide – NWD Partners

Section 1: Informed consent

• Check if they’ve read the information sheet and then reiterate key points:
• What the research is about/who it’s for
• What we’ll do with their answers – writing a report, but anything we include will be anonymous – no names.
• However, obviously relatively small numbers of people in particular roles, so can’t guarantee won’t be identifiable.
• If they feel that something they’ve said could itself be identifying and they would rather we didn’t refer directly to this in the report let us know.
• Offer to share notes after interview if they’d like to review.
• Voluntary – can stop interview at any time.
• Check if have any questions.
• Start recording - record consent to take part and (if agreed) to be audio-recorded.

Section 2: Background information

• Can you tell us about your organisation and the services you offer?
• Where (in the city) do they deliver services?
• Are there target groups for support?
• Overview of their role
• How long they’ve been doing it?

Section 3: Process of becoming a No Wrong Door partner

As you know, I wanted to speak to you today about the No Wrong Door network. It would be helpful to understand some background on how [your organisation] became involved in this.

• When did [your organisation] become a NWD partner?
• How did [your organisation] find out about the network?
• Why did [your organisation] decide to become involved in the network?
• i.e. what were the aims/objectives for their organisation?
• Is it something you consciously decided to do?
• Could you tell me a bit more about the process for joining the NWD network?
• Was there preparation needed beforehand?
• How easy or difficult was it to join? (Probe particularly on barriers)
• Was there anything that was initially a concern? How did that turn out?
• Do you go to/have you been to any of the NWD events or meetings?
• If no: Why not?
• If yes: Probe for details
• Which ones?
• How often and when/how long ago?
• What did you think of them? (e.g. usefulness/well run etc) (probe on positives/negatives)
• Are you involved in either of the two workstreams? (these are Tell Your Story and Early Intervention).
• If yes: Can you tell us about what role you have been playing in this?
• If no: Is this something you had the opportunity to be involved in?

Section 4: NWD vision and values

• What is your current understanding of what the NWD network is and what it’s trying to achieve?
• What would you say are the key values of the NWD network?
• How important is it to have shared values?
• Do they feel confident that the values are clear?
• Are they appropriate for the network?
• What, if anything, do you know about how the NWD vision and values were developed?
• If unclear: Was your organisation involved in developing the NWD vision or values?
• If no: Would you have liked to have been involved?
• If relevant: What do you think of the process of developing these? (Probe on positives and negatives)
• How well does the NWD vision and values align with those of [your organisation]? (Probe both on similarities and differences)
• Has this changed over time? (i.e. has the organisation adapted its vision/values as part of signing up to the NWD network?)
• To what extent do you feel the NWD vision and values are influencing behaviour?
• How can progress with this best be measured?
• Are there any limitations to this?

Section 5: NWD impact

I’d like to ask now about the difference, if any, that being part of the NWD network has made for you and [your organisation] more widely.

For any impacts discussed, probe on:

How & why it has made a difference.

Both positive & negative impacts.

Do they have any examples?

• Firstly, what would you say has been the biggest impact of becoming a NWD partner?
• Thinking about the support [your organisation] offers to families, what difference, if any, has being a NWD partner made in terms of:

Types of families supported

Numbers of families supported

Specific types of support offered

(e.g. new / different / changes / reductions)

How they offer support (e.g. taking a more relationship-based approach, the clever conversations approach taking things at a person’s own pace etc)

Extent to which they are now offering something meeting the needs of those they work with

• Thinking about the wider system of support that [your organisation] is part of, what difference, if any, has being a NWD partner made in terms of:

Partnerships with other organisations in the network

Any new/different partners?

Any changes to how closely they work with partners they already worked with? (E.g. how or how often they communicate, alignment of values, alignment of processes?)

Referral pathways between [your organisation] and other organisations in the network: E.g. new linkages, better referrals between services (e.g. warm referrals)

Knowledge about what is offered across the network of services

Specifically, your org’s ability to offer:

Holistic support in terms of assessment of needs and provision of support - have you changed/ improved any processes in relation to this? Ability to be an entry point into NWD

Organisationally, with ref to a) Tell Your Story and b) Early Intervention workstreams, have you…

• implemented any changes
• noticed any changes on other orgs’ processes?
• Is there anything else you are doing differently as a result of being part of this network, and the activities that it is driving forward?
• Do you think any of these changes would have happened without NWD/ the PF more generally? What other strategies/ funding streams may have enabled change?
• What are your future plans with regards to NWD? (probe for: staying involved, developments)
• Do you have any suggestions for how NWD could be improved to fulfil its potential?

Section 6: Impact of wider PF activities

The NWD network is part of a broader Child Poverty Pathfinder.

• How aware are you of wider Pathfinder activities?

One of the aims of the pathfinder is to create system change and influence how organisations work with families and with each other.

• Are you aware of any recent progress / developments relating to systems change?

Probes if needed:

• City Governance (e.g. shared accountability for targets, outcomes spend)
• Policy Alignment and Funding Flexibility
• Commissioning & Procurement
• Data and Insights – e.g. availability of data on child poverty?
• Design & Innovation
• Data Sharing e.g. progress with a shared data protection impact analysis template
• Performance Management - contribution to shared measures? e.g. the joint performance management framework for community planning partners
• Gaps in provision for families filled
• Citizen involvement in design of services

Section 7: Demonstration of Change Projects

Is your organisation involved in any of the Demonstration of Change projects? There are three, in:

Govanhill (AKA Southside Central) which is primarily about money management/ financial education,

Govan, which is employability focused and

Calton

If yes: Can you tell us about your involvement?

Probe fully e.g:

• Conceptualisation
• Co-development of the support
• Choosing the area
• Thinking about targeting of support
• Bringing in other partners
• Offering specific parts of the support
• Management
• Training
• Providing other resources

What do you think of the project(s) in relation to:

• Appropriateness of what’s being offered
• Targeting etc
• Model of delivery
• Partners involved

Section 8: Value for Money

We are keen to explore elements of VfM, like what resources are needed to deliver services as part of the NWD network, the CPP programme more generally.

• What are the current or potential future costs for [your organisation] from being a NWD/PF partner?
• Probe on direct & indirect costs – e.g. delivery costs, infrastructure set up, funding, human resource, networking
• Any unexpected costs?
• What is the rationale for making this investment? (i.e. what returns are they hoping to see)
• Has there been any progress on this so far?
• Do you think any parts of the Pathfinder/NWD network could be delivered more efficiently?
• Do you think it has/ will lead to reduced duplication of services?
• How might being involved in NWD affect your org’s costs in the future??
• Do you think there will be a reduced need for specific programme if services become better linked and easier to navigate? How?
• To what extent would you say that the NWD network/Pathfinder is reaching its target audience (families with children)?
• Are any families not being well served by this approach?
• We’re particularly interested in whether the particular groups of families may be more or less likely to benefit from the Pathfinder and why. What is it about the NWD network that may particularly impact on:

Lone parent families

Families where a family member has a disability

Minority ethnic families

Larger families with three or more children

Families where mothers are younger than 25

Families with a baby under 1 year old

Any other types of families?

Wrap up and close

• Anything else they would like to share?
• Check if would like a copy of notes to review ahead our analysis (note in recruitment sheet)
• Check if any questions.
• Check about speaking to families
• Thank and close.