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

Conclusions and learning

Key learning

Overall, there is positive qualitative evidence from both families and professionals that the support offered through the pathfinders has been meaningfully different. It has helped families address immediate crises and supported them to shift towards tackling longer-term or underlying issues. There are also encouraging signs of progress toward system change – though this is clearly a long-term endeavour.

Key learning from the Dundee pathfinder

Impact for families

Qualitative data suggests that the targeted outreach to families who would not normally engage with support has been effective – from both a practical point of view (using Council Tax Reduction data to identify families) and in terms of building relationships (the proactive contact by key workers made the support seem accessible and approachable).

The qualitative evidence from parents on their experiences of the support was overwhelmingly positive and supports the scope for this approach to help families address their immediate needs and take positive steps towards employability and/or a more financially and emotionally stable situation. The non-judgemental, trusting relationships they formed with key workers were critical to these impacts.

However, qualitative interviews also highlight the significant ongoing barriers some families face to moving out of poverty on a sustainable basis, including structural barriers (particularly wider benefits levels and rules, and the local job market), and complex health issues (and the capacity of wider services to respond to these).

The data also raises some questions around how to strike the right balance between an approach based around forging strong, trusting relationships with particular professionals, and avoiding ‘dependency’.

Systems change

Qualitative interviews with professionals provide some evidence that learning from the pathfinder has started to feed into wider services and there were felt to have been some improvements to joint working locally and improved understanding between national partners.

However, data sharing remained a barrier to more effective joint working and there was also some scepticism across partners over the likelihood of sustainable system change being achieved unless barriers relating to national systems and rules could be overcome. In particular, engaging families with ‘no work-related requirements’ on their Universal Credit, due to anxiety that it might impact on their benefit eligibility if they engaged with employability support, was a key challenge for the Pathfinder that was not able to be successfully resolved.

There was mixed evidence on whether the pathfinder had helped families become better equipped to navigate the system and, at this stage, evidence that the system itself had become easier to navigate was limited.

Key learning from the Glasgow pathfinder

Impact for families

Qualitive evidence from parents supported by Glasgow Helps confirms the potential for this approach to engage families who have struggled to access appropriate support previously – and that it has been effective in addressing a very wide range of needs. There are also some signs from No Wrong Door partners that the pathfinder is starting to help join up services in a way that enables them to link families to the right support more quickly.

Quantifying the impact of the pathfinder on families is currently very difficult. However, parent case studies highlight the ways in which they have been able to move from addressing short-term financial needs to addressing longer-term barriers to sustainable outcomes, including health and wellbeing and support around employment and training.

Systems change

Professionals expect that whole system change will take at least 10 years to achieve, so evidence on this longer-term outcome is limited at this point.

That said, there are positive early signs of progress on system change, including: improved collaboration and partnership working between GCC, the third sector, the Scottish Government and parts of the wider public sector; the promotion of shared culture and values; and progress on embedding a No Wrong Door approach across wider services.

There was a strong consensus across interviewees that the approach in Glasgow was the right one in terms of the likelihood of achieving long-term reform, and that investing in the multi-agency change capacity team to develop and drive this had been critical.

Wider learning

The findings in this report raise a number of issues and questions for the Scottish Government and for other areas planning similar partnerships to consider, and which may also be helpful for the Glasgow and Dundee pathfinders to reflect on as they further develop. These are summarised in the box below.

Key elements of good practice from the Glasgow and Dundee pathfinder approaches are transferable – but will likely need to be adapted for different areas. For example, careful consideration would need to be given to how to resource ‘multi-agency change teams’ in areas that may not have the same level of organisational resource to draw on as Glasgow. Similarly, bringing partners together to support families may need to happen in a different way in rural areas, where co-location, for example, can be more difficult.

Designing and evaluating a pathfinder project

• How wide is the project’s system change ambition? What is the balance between testing an intervention(s) and focusing on system change?
• Assuming the ultimate outcome is reducing child poverty, how much flexibility are partners prepared to accept around the means of achieving this (e.g. around the specific activities, outputs and short/medium term outcomes)?
• If short/medium term outcomes need to evolve, who needs to be involved in agreeing this, and how do you maintain buy-in if outcomes change?
• What are the expected timeframes for achieving short/medium and ultimate outcomes? Are these expectations clearly evidenced, articulated and shared across all partners and key stakeholders?

Targeted vs. broad approach to tackling child poverty

• Who is the core target group for the service/intervention? How much flexibility is there around who can access support? Are there/should there be eligibility criteria for particular elements (e.g. more intensive support)?
• What are potential and actual implications of the approach adopted (whether more open or more targeted) for demand and resources, on the one hand, and for stigma and missed opportunities, on the other?

Meaning and implications of a ‘no wrong-door’ model

• What are the defining features of the approach to working with families that the project/programme is taking?
• What is the best way of describing the approach to working with families, to avoid potential confusion?

Avoiding dependency in relationship-based support

• How do projects balance holistic, relational support with avoiding dependency, so that people are able to move on, especially if funding is not indefinite and individual support workers may not be permanently located in the same place-based services?

Delivering sustainable system change

• Is there a clear, shared understanding of the extent of system change that projects are trying to achieve?
• Is the appropriate governance in place to ensure the right level of oversight and strategic input for driving both operational delivery and system change? Are the right partners round the table?
• Are the resources and timescales allocated to projects appropriate for influencing or achieving sustainable system change?
• How can system change aims and plans be clearly explained to internal and external stakeholders?
• What role should the Scottish Government and other national partners play in resolving data sharing issues, to avoid individual local authorities and projects ‘reinventing the wheel’?

Monitoring and evaluation

• What does it mean to evaluate the impact of a pathfinder, which is continuing to evolve as it is being evaluated?
• When should research questions be set, and how much flexibility should there be about evaluation approaches, monitoring data requirements, and timelines for measuring outcomes?
• What are different partners’ expectations of the level or type of evidence needed from pathfinders? What are the implications and trade-offs that may need to be resolved?

Key gaps in wider services

• How can the links between poverty programmes and health services be strengthened?
• How can the links between poverty programmes and the benefits system be strengthened?
• Which other wider policies and services should poverty programmes link with?
• How can gaps in families’ access to mental and physical health support be filled?

How to access background or source data

May be made available on request, subject to consideration of legal and ethical factors. Please contact social-justice-analysis@gov.scot for further information.