Child poverty pathfinders in Dundee and Glasgow: phase two evaluation

8. Learning on reaching and supporting families: Glasgow

Introduction

This chapter discusses learning from the Glasgow pathfinder relating to reaching and supporting families in poverty, using a case study approach and considering evidence from:

• Glasgow Helps
• the No Wrong Door network
• Intermediate Labour Market (ILM) initiatives
• the three ward-based ‘Demonstration of Change’ projects.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the Glasgow pathfinder is not framed as ‘an intervention’ or a ‘collection of interventions’ aiming to achieve particular outcomes for families, but rather as a whole system change programme. As such, it was agreed that it was not feasible or appropriate for this evaluation to attempt to robustly ‘evaluate’ the individual services linked to the pathfinder, and the learning in this chapter should not be read in this way. Instead it focuses on learning related to reaching, engaging and supporting families.

The theory of change has been used to inform the analysis and reflections in this chapter, particularly in terms of focusing on the potential for the NWD approach to support families to move from short-term outcomes (such as easier access to the right support, meeting immediate needs, and identifying underlying issues) to longer-term outcomes (such as empowering people to make change for themselves, moving into employment, and building resilience).

Data and limitations

This chapter draws on three main data sources:

• Interviews with professionals, particularly interviews with Glasgow Helps staff (Service Advisors, Holistic Support Officers and the team lead), NWD network members, and ward-based DoC project leads, but also views of members of the MACT and other pathfinder stakeholders.
• Interviews (18 in total) with parents who had been supported by Glasgow Helps, parents who had interacted with the NWD network, and people who had been supported into new jobs through ILM interventions linked to the pathfinder.
• Analysis of extracts of Glasgow Helps monitoring data provided to the evaluation team.

Each of these data sources has its own strengths and limitations, as set out below.

With respect to professional interviews, although we spoke to a wide range of professional stakeholders through interviews and workshops, it must be acknowledged that, given the very large number of pathfinder partners, there may be other views not reflected here. In particular, professional interviews in Glasgow were skewed towards those fairly closely involved in the pathfinder.

In terms of interviews with parents, the sample size was smaller than hoped. This reflected challenges in both identifying and accessing parents who it was agreed might be able to comment in a meaningful way on impacts related to the Glasgow pathfinder when this evaluation took place.

• At Wave 1, the focus was families who had been supported by Glasgow Helps. Ipsos was reliant on the support of the operational team in approaching and gaining consent to share contact details with us, as there was no consent already in place for sharing contact details with external researchers. Contact details for 19 parents were shared, and the evaluation team was able to arrange interviews with 11.
• At Wave 2, the focus was on the NWD network and ILM initiatives. Due to difficulties recruiting parents through NWD partners, only two parents were interviewed. However, we also have insights from 10 NWD professional partners on the perceived impacts for families. Six beneficiaries of ILM initiatives were interviewed and, again, we also have insights from professionals on the perceived impacts for families.

The Glasgow Helps monitoring data also used in this chapter is primarily based on extracts from the data collected by the team using AdvicePro, a case management tool purchased by the pathfinder and used by Glasgow Helps from October 2023. The extracts covered cases recorded in the AdvicePro system from October 2023 to September 2024. Of the 300 clients included in the extracts, 133 were recorded as having a dependent child aged 16 or under^[28], and before and after outcomes were recorded for 82 of these.

While this data generated some useful insights about Glasgow Helps engagement with families over 2023-2024, given the complex structure of the data and relatively small numbers, the scope for detailed analysis was quite limited. As such, the findings based on this monitoring data should be seen as indicative of the patterns of support and outcomes for families.

Evidencing a NWD approach: learning from Glasgow Help’s work with families

About Glasgow Helps

Glasgow Helps was initially established during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide assistance (via a phone line) to vulnerable citizens in the city. Referral processes were created so that citizens could be linked with partner organisations providing wide-ranging support. Learning from Glasgow Helps’ role during the pandemic (see Cruywagen and McNulty, 2021) identified that many people who had contacted them for support had not known how to access services before, and that many also had multiple underlying issues and benefited from holistic support, rather than issues being dealt with separately. Glasgow Helps was therefore continued beyond the pandemic period and became part of the pathfinder as an early vehicle for supporting the delivery of the No Wrong Door approach, through its person-centred, holistic approach to assisting citizens and connecting them to other sources of support.

Glasgow Helps’ service delivery model has strategically evolved over time, with an intermediary role (‘Support Assistant’) introduced in late 2023 in response to increases in demand. Box 8.1 shows the main support roles in Glasgow Helps, as of late 2024.

The support that Glasgow Helps offers, particularly through Holistic Support Officers (HSOs), is intentionally flexible and grounded in a ‘relational approach’. It aims to go beyond the provision of crisis support and to help people become more resilient and empowered in addressing their challenges.

“Rather than just directing people to a food bank, it's like: let's address your life and why this is happening and try and break that cycle.”

(Glasgow Professional interview)

Box 8.1: Glasgow Helps support roles

• Customer Service Advisors (CSAs): Take inbound calls, at which point they can either deal with immediate needs themselves, by referring to relevant organisations like food banks, or can pass clients on to SAs for further support.
• Support Assistants (SAs): Do not answer initial incoming calls but follow up with those identified by CSAs as needing further support. They work with citizens to address some underlying or persistent issues. Where more intensive support is still deemed necessary, they pass clients over to the HSOs. SAs also lead on outreach work, including visiting schools and nurseries in person to offer support or advice to parents.
• Holistic Support Officers (HSOs): Are assigned to delve deeper into people’s stories and support needs and provide them with intensive one-on-one support until citizens feel their issues have been addressed as far as possible. The HSOs are therefore core to providing longer-term, holistic support. HSOs can support people over the phone but can also carry out in-person and/or home visits, dependent on the clients’ preferences. The October 2024 ‘Monitoring, performance and insights’ report states that clients assigned a HSO engage with them an average of 9.5 times. As part of this process, HSOs complete a Holistic Needs Assessment (HNA) with clients. This was described as involving “clever conversations” during which HSOs design a tailored care plan in collaboration with the citizen.

Targeting and reaching families through Glasgow Helps

Glasgow Helps engaged with 5,142 individual clients between October 2023 and October 2024 (Glasgow Helps, 2024). The vast majority of these clients are supported on a one-off or short-term basis by either CSAs or SAs, providing immediate advice or onward referrals. Demographic data is not collected on these initial calls (which are designed to be “seamless and not too time-consuming”). As such, there is no breakdown of how many of these 5,142 clients had dependent children under 16. However, the data extracts shared with Ipsos included demographic data for 300 clients, of whom 44% had children aged up to 16. The vast majority of these 300 clients were recorded as having received HSO support. Of these 300 clients, 80 were recorded as having children up to five years old (60% of clients with children, and 27% of all HSO clients in the data extract). According to staff interviewed, anyone can receive holistic support from Glasgow Helps, but those with children under five are prioritised.

Reflections from stakeholder interviews highlighted that one of the learnings from Glasgow Helps was that, as a universal service, only a minority of the families getting in touch were likely to be at a point where they were thinking about dealing with underlying barriers to moving out of poverty (e.g. employment, training, etc.). This is reflected in the relatively small cohort of families in the HSO monitoring data shared with Ipsos who had cases opened to address employment (3.94% of HSO clients in the data extract). This learning had informed the decision to introduce the more place-based, geographically targeted DoCs in the next stage of the pathfinder.

Table 8.1, below, suggests that of the priority family types (identified by Scottish Government as being at higher risk of poverty), HSOs’ caseloads include a relatively high proportion of minority ethnic families (around 1 in 5 of all clients), but fewer families with disabled family members (around 1 in 10), and relatively small numbers of families with children under 1 or families with young parents.

Table 8.1: Engagement with Glasgow Helps by priority families (data extract shared with Ipsos)

Priority families	Notes on GH data extract shared with Ipsos	% of all Glasgow Helps HSO clients falling into this group (data shared with Ipsos)
Households with a disabled adult or child		9% (27)
Minority ethnic families	Ethnic background recorded for those comfortable answering. The figure is calculated based on identification with any ethnicity apart from White, White Scottish or White British.	20% (60)
Families with a child under 1		4% (13)
Families where the mother is under 25	Data is at client level, rather than household level, so this is the number of all clients aged under 25 with a child aged 16 or under, not just mothers.	2% (7)
Base	All unique clients in the data extract shared with Ipsos	300

Note: the data extracts shared with the evaluation did not include clear information on family size or on whether clients were lone parents, so this is not included.

More generally, it was felt that Glasgow Helps had been focusing its outreach resources on reaching families:

“It is a relatively small team; when you've got nearly a hundred people trying to reach millions of people it's really tough so there is obviously always going to be people that fall through the cracks. I think for us it's just about continuing to branch out .... It's about advertising the service to the right people and getting support to the people that need it the most, which is the families and that is our main focus.”

(Glasgow professional interview)

The Glasgow Helps team felt that outreach to schools and early years settings had been effective in helping them reach parents. As noted above, building on early testing of outreach approaches through the pathfinder, at the time interviews were conducted SAs were each based in a nursery or primary school one day a week to offer in person support to parents of young children who needed it. Although it was noted that the level of demand varied, being able to offer this face-to-face support (including to other parents in the area who contact CSAs by phone and could be invited to attend these venues to speak to SAs in person) was seen as helpful.

Qualitative interviews with parents provided evidence that Glasgow Helps has been able to engage families who had not been able to access the support they needed through other routes. Parents identified key features they felt had supported them to engage, including:

• The perceived accessibility and flexibility of support: for example, one parent who had health issues that meant they could not meet in person said they had been turned away by a different organisation who did not provide virtual or telephone appointments before contacting Glasgow Helps. Another participant with a neurological condition noted that the combination of telephone, text and email-based support offered by Glasgow Helps was crucial in enabling them to access support.
• Building trusting relationships: building trusting relationships with Glasgow Helps HSOs was a key theme, particularly for those who had previous negative experience with services and were initially reluctant to engage. Similar to parents’ description of the Dundee key workers, the team’s down-to-earth and authentic manner was seen as key to this, as well as the fact that they did not act too formally, with conversations seen as less ‘scripted’ than with other organisations they had experienced.

“The first time I interacted with Glasgow Helps there was an energy that I knew that it was going to be different."

(Parent)

• The lack of strict eligibility criteria: parents described having previously found it difficult to access support because of strict eligibility requirements. Again, this was contrasted with Glasgow Helps’ proactive offers of support where a need was identified.

How has Glasgow Helps impacted on families?

As described above, Glasgow Helps is premised on offering holistic, person-centred support, driven by what clients need rather than by service-led targets or priorities. Interviews with parents and staff, along with monitoring data on ‘support cases’ opened^[29], highlight that it has been able to support the families it has engaged with across a wide range of areas, including:

• Short-term financial and material support: The monitoring data extract indicates that three of the four most common categories of HSO ‘support case’ opened for families with children related to financial and material needs – financial assistance, utilities and bills, and food. Glasgow Helps is able to help families by organising or referring them for food parcels or vouchers, fuel vouchers, clothes for parents and children, and one-off funding for childcare, as well as referring on to organisations able to provide financial advice.
• Help with housing: Housing is the second most common category of HSO ‘support case’ for families with children. Parents interviewed for this evaluation described receiving help with filling in applications, identifying housing options, or advocating to housing officers on their behalf. In October 2024, the Glasgow Helps team had seconded a staff member from Maryhill Housing Association to enhance support in this area.
• Employment support: Glasgow Helps is not an employability service and does not have specific aims around employment outcomes. However, staff and parent interviews provided examples of support being given relating to employment. This includes both onward referrals and advice and help provided directly by HSOs around future job and training options. While parents were not always at the stage of being able to start work, interviews indicated that Glasgow Helps support had helped them feel they were moving “in the right direction”. Parents also gave examples where they felt Glasgow Helps had helped them stay in work, for example by helping with accessing childcare funding.
• Wider mental and physical health and wellbeing: Mental health was recorded as the specific reason for opening a case for around 1 in 10 parents in the monitoring data extract. However, interviews with professionals and parents indicate that Glasgow Helps is supporting parents with their mental and physical health and wellbeing even when this may not be recorded as the main reason for support. Comments from parents highlighted the significant impacts on their health and wellbeing from the help provided.

“I think if I didn’t have them [Glasgow Helps], I would probably have quite a lot of financial pressure, like stress, like my mental health probably would have been a lot worse and things. So yeah, I feel like if I didn't have that, I would probably feel a lot more worried and stressed about my money situation and things like that."

(Parent who had been supported with financial issues)

Parents and professionals also identified a range of referrals made by Glasgow Helps that supported mental and physical health and wellbeing more directly. Examples included a referral to a parent support group for a participant with an autistic child; help with organising respite for a parent whose child was receiving palliative care; support in organising a parent’s gym membership, and help with finding local activities for children.

The evaluation theory of change for the Glasgow pathfinder hypothesised that by engaging parents with holistic, person-centred, ‘no wrong door’ support, services would be able to support them to move from dealing with immediate, short-term, crisis needs, to engaging with services, and identifying and starting to address underlying issues, such as employability barriers, and building confidence and hope. Interviews with parents for this evaluation highlight the potential of this approach to do just that, as evidenced by the case studies below.

Pen portrait 1: Julie

Julie is a single parent with a primary school-aged child and currently works part time. She was initially referred to Glasgow Helps by a partner organisation, when struggling to pay for her gas and electricity bills. At the time, Julie was also looking to change career. Glasgow Helps referred her to an employability advisor, and to an organisation that provided her with work clothes. Julie was assigned to a HSO who also sorted out one-off funding for childcare, as she was struggling to afford full time childcare over summer. If she had not received this financial support for childcare, Julie felt she would have really struggled and may have had to give up working.

Julie also discussed her mental wellbeing with her HSO, who organised a free trial for a gym membership (including accompanying her to the gym for the first time) and offered to refer her to counselling to support her mental health. Although she did not feel in need of counselling at the time, it felt good to know that the option was available if needed in the future, and that her HSO would be there to speak to as well.

“All the referrals that I got were really good. They got in touch in like a couple of weeks of them [Glasgow Helps] putting the referrals in.”

Julie feels that receiving support has helped her daughter too, as she was able to keep her in the same after-school care. Julie is now working towards a new career and feels she can be a better parent due to her own mental health improving.

“Sometimes you just need that somebody to talk to when you’re feeling down or whatever. And I feel like I’ve got that, I can contact my support worker and speak about anything that I’m struggling with.”

Pen portrait 2: Max

Max is a single parent with three children who works part time. He approached Glasgow Helps when he was struggling with one of his children’s behaviour and wellbeing and was feeling unsupported. After contacting Glasgow Helps, Max was assigned to a HSO who listened to his concerns and advocated on his behalf with another service, which he felt had helped him access more appropriate support for his family.

Max also accessed additional support with food and electricity bills; vouchers for his children’s school uniforms; Christmas gifts for his children; and offers of support for his own mental health through Glasgow Helps. Max had previously become very distrusting of support services due to other negative experiences, but he built a positive relationship with his HSO.

"It was weird how I ended up building up that trust because at that time, if anybody got involved, I didn't trust them. I thought there was an ulterior motive for everybody."

His HSO encouraged Max to stay in work by applying for a new a job that would make it easier for him to balance work with his children’s needs. Max credits Glasgow Helps for helping his and his children’s wellbeing.

"You'd feel that somebody cared because I would speak to social work and they never really cared. I talked to the police and they wouldn't really care, then you'd speak to [HSO] and she did care, for my mental state and things like that."

Pen portrait 3: Sarah

Glasgow Helps was one of the first services that Sarah found when googling support in her local area, after not being able to take up a face-to-face appointment from another service due to being unwell. She contacted Glasgow Helps online and somebody phoned her within 24 hours. After Sarah explained her situation (she had moved to Glasgow at very short notice following a crisis in her previous living situation), a Glasgow Helps employee sent her a food voucher and provided her with money for clothes. They then moved on to addressing other pressing needs, including helping her access a Scottish Welfare Fund grant for white goods.

After addressing her immediate needs, Glasgow Helps asked if they could help Sarah in other ways. She has since spoken to them about employment and finances, and been referred to a charity for support, although she hasn’t yet engaged with them due to being unwell. This has also meant she has not been able to work, though she hopes to as soon as she is well enough. Although she is not receiving specific support anymore, Glasgow Helps still contacts Sarah to see how she is getting on, and to check on her wellbeing.

“They’ve been amazing for me and my daughter. And they’re so informative. They have information for everything. If you have a problem or you’re discussing anything with them, they have a solution for everything or a pathway to a solution. They know someplace or something. I don’t think I’ve ever heard them say, ‘I don’t know about this’. They’re so easy to get help from… and it’s like a friend phoning...that’s what I really like about them.”

Glasgow Helps captures some outcomes in their monitoring data, via ‘concerns matrix’ scores. These involve scoring clients on a scale from 1 to 10 as to how big a concern the issues they present with are when a ‘case’ is first opened for that issue^[30]. The aim is to revisit this when support has been provided and the ‘case’ is closed. When analysis of the monitoring data extract was restricted to clients with children aged up to 16, the number of cases each ‘change in mean score’ is based on was quite small. This is because there were a significant number of zeros recorded either at the initial score (which we understood to mean no score was assigned) and/or last score (in some cases this may have been because it had not been possible to conduct a final exit interview at the time the data was extracted). It was also noted in a professional interview that the scoring process involves some subjectivity on the part of the HSO, particularly when it comes to recording a final score and indicating how successfully concerns have been addressed

More broadly, one view among Glasgow pathfinder stakeholders was that it’s hard to measure the impact of Glasgow Helps as a service and to fully reflect its value in quantifiable metrics - particularly metrics related to finances and employment. This is partly due to a perspective that one of the most important aspects of Glasgow Helps is the relationships built between HSOs and clients and also that, due to the complex circumstances faced by many clients, it can take a significant amount of time for progress to be realised.

“What makes it quite hard to measure is that success for us could be working with somebody for six months to get them through the threshold of a library or to get them to attend a gym, and as a result of that we don’t really have those clear metrics and clear outcomes… if we're going to successfully tell the story of how this works with people, then we need to get better at articulating how relationships are the difference maker.”

(Professional)

Acknowledging this view (which echoes similar views about evidencing the value of the Dundee pathfinder), and that mean scores can be taken as indicative only of Glasgow Helps’ impact, given small numbers completed, they are included here to give a sense of areas where parents have seen more or less change. Table 8.2 below shows changes in mean scores from first to last ratings for the four most common ‘case types’ in the data extract, where there were at least 20 cases with a first and last score recorded in the data. While all four areas of concern had seen improvements in mean scores, these were biggest for financial assistance (3.49) and slightly lower for mental health (2.95).

Table 8.2: Mean improvement in concern across main matter categories, ranked from largest to smallest change (clients with children aged 16 or under)

Main matter category	Mean improvement in concern (points on a ten-point scale)	Number of cases
Financial assistance	3.49	39
Housing	3.40	35
Utilities and bills	3.17	24
Mental health	2.95	21

Enablers and barriers to positive impacts on families

The key factors parents felt had facilitated the positive impacts reported above largely reflected the factors that had supported their engagement with the service: accessible and flexible support and, crucially, the trusting relationships they had built with their HSOs. The way they described Glasgow Helps support highlighted many similar features to those discussed for the key workers’ support in Dundee – for example, empathy, reliability, and consistency – and, as in Dundee, was contrasted with previous negative experiences of support elsewhere. One parent described their experiences with Glasgow Helps as the first time they felt someone had considered their personal wellbeing and that they were “finally being listened to”. Again, the holistic, open-ended, wrap-around nature of the support was singled out:

“I felt like… somebody was actually going to, you know, try and push to do everything that they possibly could to move me in the right direction."

(Parent)

Professionals also highlighted that the success of Glasgow Helps in being able to offer reliable, holistic support has been dependent on the partnerships it has built with other organisations. These in turn are supported by the NWD network formed by the pathfinder. Relationships with other services have given Glasgow Helps the confidence that their outward referrals will meet families’ needs. The data extract provided to Ipsos included 438 referrals to 101 different organisations for the 133 families in the data, with the most common being One Parent Family Scotland (46), Citizen’s Advice (24), food pantries (23), DIFFERabled (a support organisation for neurodivergent parents and families) (20), Housing Associations (18) and the Scottish Welfare Fund (18).

In some cases, specific funding has been allocated to partners (e.g. food pantries) to ensure they are able to provide support to those referred by Glasgow Helps, again providing greater confidence in these ‘funded referral pathways’. In other cases, they have referral agreements over how quickly clients referred through Glasgow Helps will be seen; for example, Glasgow Helps has a business agreement with Citizen’s Advice that their clients will be followed up within 24 hours and have direct access to an officer who can carry out benefits checks. While commitment and creativity on the part of the Glasgow Helps team was still required, their model was underpinned by effective partnership arrangements.

“I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone and not at least been able to signpost them somewhere and I think that's really the key to being … no wrong door.”

(Glasgow Professional interview)

The barriers to positive impacts for families identified in Glasgow also chimed with many of the issues identified in Dundee: challenges supporting parents with long-term health or caring-related barriers to employment; issues of resource or speed of support within the wider system, with the availability of housing and mental health support in the city particularly singled out; barriers relating to the wider benefit system, including the two-child cap (although it is worth noting that the Scottish Government has committed to mitigating this for families in Scotland since these interviews took place); and wider cost of living challenges (including transport costs).

In terms of the potential for Glasgow Helps to contribute to empowering families to make change for themselves and to be resilient and less reliant on services, while there was some positive evidence (including from the case studies above), as in Dundee, there was also reflection among stakeholders on the potential for dependency to develop when providing intensive, open-ended relational support. It was recognised that there needs to be a way of reducing dependency to allow staff to focus on other people who need their help, which can be difficult to manage. The challenge of balancing demand on resources with being able to provide effective relationship-based support was also recognised by senior Glasgow stakeholders, and raises questions around what it means to fully scale this approach, and how it can be managed without creating unsustainable demand (and potentially undermining the ability to provide it effectively).

“We're absolutely 100% committed to that relational type service. I think that (we’re) absolutely convinced that (it) really, really works for people. But demand outstrips supply at this point in time, right, we just can't do enough outreach, we can't develop enough of these relationships. I think what we're always conscious of is of being inundated with demand that we can't actually address.”

(Glasgow professional stakeholder)

This again echoes themes raised in Dundee, and is revisited in the final chapter of the report.

Early evidence on reach and impacts for families from the No Wrong Door network, Intermediate Labour Market initiatives and Demonstrations of Change

As discussed, it was too early to formally assess the impacts for families of activities taking place as part of the new 2024-2027 plan for the pathfinder. However, interviews with NWD partners, wider pathfinder stakeholders, and a small number of families provide some insights into perceptions of early and potential impacts of the ‘No wrong door’ network, ILM initiatives, and DoC projects for families.

Wider NWD (‘no wrong door’) Network

A key element of the pathfinder’s strategy for embedding a NWD approach across Glasgow has been the development of a wider ‘NWD network’ of partner organisations “dedicated to creating a better, more connected system for families experiencing poverty” (NWD network webpage).

At the point this evaluation took place, the NWD network was generally seen as more “partner-orientated”, as systems and processes for working together and collecting data to evidence impact on families were still being worked out. However, interviews with NWD partner organisations and wider pathfinder stakeholders identified examples where they felt the network had already delivered positive impacts for families in terms of easier or quicker access to the right support, including:

• the Education Department receiving referrals into their school-age childcare services from Glasgow Helps
• a Housing Association reporting that their team were able to refer tenants onto a wider range of organisations now that they had become aware of them via the NWD network
• Police Scotland felt they had been able to refer vulnerable citizens to more appropriate support organisations (also potentially easing the burden on social work referrals) as a result of links made through the NWD network
• a public sector partner mentioned that there was now more work between them and professionals in a third sector NWD (and DoC) partner ‘behind the scenes’ to support clients. This enabled the public sector organisation to benefit from client trust in the other partner, so that both could provide better support:

“It’s (other partner), that's who's in touch with the customer. They'll be the kind of the conduit for us all keeping in touch. The customer will go through them because the customer trusts them and has built that relationship. … we work together to get what the customer needs. … So, I think it's more about doing what's right for the person and who they trust, and just us all working together.”

(Glasgow Professional interviewee)

These examples highlight the potential of the network to lead to a more joined up experience for families. While this evaluation only heard from two families with experience of being referred between network partners, both felt that their experience had been good in terms of the links between services.

“They [Glasgow] tend to take care of the community very, very well. It's one thing I can say for Glasgow as a whole, especially me coming here to live, there are people that care about the welfare of every individual. And even if you don't know, people tend to signpost you to places that you know you can get that help that you need. And it has been a very, very big impact in most of our lives here.”

(Parent who had interacted with the NWD network)

Pathfinder partners were also optimistic about the ability of the network to reach priority groups of families at risk of poverty, including lone parents, families from ethnic minority backgrounds, and families with disabilities, as the network included organisations that worked directly with these groups. It was felt that this could help other organisations increase their reach to these groups, since families who might not have approached them directly could be referred via ‘warm handovers’ between network partners who know and have confidence in each other’s services. While this was largely framed in terms of the future potential of the network, comments from NWD partners indicate that this was already starting to happen:

“So, I think to me the benefit of that model is that we're accessing people that we might not necessarily do as a housing sector, but the main benefit is for the citizen and that they're not getting bounced from agency to agency. They're getting a warm referral from someone that they trust. So, there's an opportunity there, maybe as a housing association, to support people that would have been maybe a bit nervous or there might have been some stigma or they might have had concerns about coming directly to you, but then you'll have a warm handover from another organisation.”

(Glasgow professional interview)

While there was a strong perception that the NWD network would benefit families, the evidence at this stage is largely based on feedback from network partners. The pathfinder has been working on how to better align and support collection of case management data across the network, which would help evidence outcomes for families more directly (see discussion in the following chapter).

Reflections on Intermediate Labour Market (ILM) programmes linked to the pathfinder

The Glasgow pathfinder has had links with the GCC employability team and others involved in economic development throughout. It has used these links to identify gaps in terms of supporting parents into employment, and to test ideas for filling these, including through ILM projects. ILM projects aim to bridge the gap between unemployment and employment by providing a work placement, often accompanied by additional training or support.

As discussed above, ILM programmes were not initially intended to be a specific focus of this evaluation, and the number of ILM participants interviewed was small (five participants, including two people who were not parents). However, we have included brief reflections from their interviews here, along with reflections from professional partner interviews where relevant, as they highlight the potential for developing ILMs and linking them with wider activities and approaches to improve the likelihood of parents achieving sustainable employment outcomes. Participants were from three pathfinder-linked ILMs, two of which began to be developed in the first phase of the pathfinder and one which was developed more recently, linked to a ward-based DoC project:

• Money Advice ILM: Citizen’s Advice Scotland trained 10 people to become Welfare Rights Advisors. One parent was interviewed, who was still being trained and hoped to be certified by early 2024.
• Transport ILM: Community Transport Glasgow (CTG) aimed to train 20 people for new jobs in transport. Three parent interviewees had been trained to drive minibuses, via full-time paid training over six months. All three were employed by CTG at the time they were interviewed.
• Govan Help/Jobs and Business Glasgow ILM: We spoke to two participants. Both had originally been volunteers at the Govan Help Food Pantry. They had been invited to apply for six-month part-time paid roles at the Pantry, supported through Jobs and Business Glasgow (who are co-leads on the Govan DoC). Neither were parents, but their experience was an example of the ‘clients to colleagues’ model being evolved and tested as part of the next stage of the pathfinder (the PID includes a target of helping 100 families into jobs in this way by 2027). The two interviewees were part-way through the six-month paid role at the time they were interviewed.

Participants in ILMs were recruited through voluntary sector partners, who were used to identify people who might benefit from the schemes. Overall, the focus to date appears to have been more on those closer to employment or “well on their way to employability”, as one professional interviewee put it. Of the six participants interviewed, most were either volunteering already with the organisation ‘hosting’ their ILM job or were already employed in part-time roles but looking for full-time hours. At the same time, it was clear from interviews that all participants had all faced significant barriers to accessing suitable employment, including language and digital literacy issues.

In terms of how the ILMs linked to the pathfinder were seen to differ from a ‘standard’ ILM, as with every element of the pathfinder, they were intended to reflect NWD principles. As described by a professional interviewee, they were meant to wrap a whole system of support around participants, so that other barriers to employment could also be addressed. Participants interviewed for this evaluation identified various ways in which they felt they had benefited from this approach, including:

• being able to access food parcels and electricity vouchers (to help bridge the gap between stopping benefits and starting to receive a wage)
• being referred to an organisation who was able to pay their first month of full-time childcare as they started their ILM role
• being provided with English classes (for a participant with ESL)
• and general flexibility around the ILM role, enabling them to spend more time with their family.

There was evidence from those who had moved into jobs that they felt the ILM had supported them to move into roles they would not otherwise have been able to access and had widened their future options:

“I feel a lot more hopeful about just how… Because I would have never thought I would take on a role like this, but now I’m realising that I can maybe do a lot of different things that I could go for.”

Even where there was not a guaranteed job at the end of the placement, participants nonetheless felt very positive about the prospect of finding another job as a result of qualifications or new skills gained, or more recent evidence of employment on their CVs. They also suggested that the type of support they had received was different and had helped them feel more optimistic about their future employment prospects than previous help they had experienced:

“I've been unemployed before, so I've had support from the job centre, although I can't really call it support because it's, it doesn't feel very personal. So hopefully it feels a bit more personalised with Jobs and Business. So yeah, I'm just, I'm feeling hopeful about it.”

At the same time, participants in these three ILMs identified various ongoing barriers to gaining suitable sustainable employment, which highlight how difficult it is for any one programme to guarantee sustainable employment outcomes without change across the system. Specific challenges mentioned included: the availability of government support for childcare for those with no recourse to public funds; barriers relating to speaking English as a Second Language; transport barriers; and digital literacy. A specific suggested area for improvement for the ILMs themselves was around having more of the preparatory materials for ILM roles in other languages.

Early learning around reaching and engaging families from the ward-based DoCs

As described in chapter 7, the new phase of the pathfinder/programme in Glasgow includes five ‘Demonstration of Change’ (DoC) projects, including three place-based projects. Given the relatively early stage of these DoCs, partners’ reflections focused particularly on processes for identifying and engaging their target groups.

The initial place-based DoCs are taking place in Southside Central, Calton, and Govan. The decision to focus on these areas was led by analysis of data held by the Council (Council Tax Reduction and Housing Benefit data) using Glasgow’s Child Poverty Dashboard, a resource developed alongside the pathfinder. This had enabled the pathfinder team to identify 10 so-called ‘booster wards’ (including the three DoC wards) with the highest number of children living in poverty. While the use of data to identify which areas to focus on was viewed very positively, interviews with lead professionals identified a number of emergent issues around how to target and reach individual families in practice.

First, in spite of being able to identify the individual families they want to target from Council-held data, the Glasgow pathfinder has encountered challenges around gaining permission to use this data to contact families^[31]. Waiting on data sharing agreements being finalised had delayed the start of the DoCs. In Govan, the expectation at the time interviews were conducted was that targeting would need to involve matching of families on the dashboard (identified through DWP data) with those already known to partners involved in delivering the DoC. Southside Central had taken a similar approach already; the 20 families they had initially reached out to already had relationships with Financial Inclusion providers involved in delivering the DoC.

While this approach was seen as beneficial in terms of avoiding ‘cold contacts’ that families might be less likely to respond to, it was not clear how far the DoCs’ ability to reach all of the families in their target cohorts might be limited if data sharing agreements do not allow for outreach to those who are not already known to partner services. It also required a time-consuming manual process (similar to that described in the Dundee chapter), whereby data controllers (DWP) had to sit together with pathfinder partners to identify which benefit recipients had previously been supported by GCC or another pathfinder partner.

Second, although pathfinder partners were extremely positive about the prospect of using the Child Poverty Dashboard to understand in which areas there are more families likely to benefit from outreach, there was also a view that, if they focus only or mainly on those identified by this data, the DoCs might be “missing a trick”. In particular, it was noted that the Dashboard has limitations in how far it could identify areas with families ‘on the cusp’ of poverty – who are a key target for the Calton DoC - since families have to be on Universal Credit to be identified through Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction data. Consequently, partners planned to take a multi-pronged approach to identifying families, including using their own existing contacts and those of their partners, in addition to the dashboard data.

Beyond issues about use of data, projects had already identified a number of accessibility issues they expected to need to consider when engaging families, including:

• Language barriers, given the high numbers of families with ESL in particular booster wards. One DoC lead noted that many families required interpreters for even basic communication, which impacted both delivering support and linking them to other services.
• Disability: Govan, in particular, was mentioned as having high proportions of families with disabilities who might encounter quite specific barriers to employment (supporting families to access work is a key aim of the Govan DoC).
• Needs for mental health support, which one DoC recognised as a limitation in terms of the immediate partners’ expertise.

More generally, the complexity of families’ needs was highlighted. Early learning from the Southside Central DoC was that it was taking longer than originally anticipated to move from providing initial support to families to a more holistic consideration of their wider longer-term needs. Overall, they reported that the families engaged to date had required more help than initially anticipated, particularly around language barriers and financial literacy. A key insight from this was the need for ESOL provision within the area. From this information, the provision of ESOL is being looked at from a city-wide level, as well as a bespoke offering within the Southside Central ward being developed.

The Calton Demonstration of Change, focused on families on the cusp of poverty, was still in development at the time of the evaluation, so no early learning could be gathered. However, at the time of writing, this project has now been approved, focused on three areas of activity: childcare, employer engagement and ESOL. Community engagement is also central, aiming to ensure that local voices shape the programme’s delivery and impact.

Conclusions and learning

A summary of evidence relating to families and wider learning and reflections is set out below.

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. The pathfinder is at an early stage of embedding this approach across all services families might use, but there are some signs from NWD 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 very difficult. However, qualitative evidence shows that the holistic approach and strong partnership framework for Glasgow Helps has been effective in addressing a very wide range of needs. 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, as well as support around employment and training where relevant.

It is too early to assess whether the pathfinder supports families onto sustainable routes out of poverty. However, this is a key focus for the newer DoC projects.

Wider learning and reflections: Reaching and impacting on families

The evidence on reach and impact for families raises questions around a number of themes that merit further reflection, both as the Glasgow pathfinder develops, and as the Scottish Government and other areas consider their own approaches to improving the system of support for families.

Use of Data

The Child Poverty Dashboard illustrates the potential for councils to use data to identify geographic priority areas in terms of addressing child poverty. Developing a tool like this clearly involves significant resource, however. As Scotland’s biggest council (by population size), Glasgow was well placed to lead on this, but the Scottish Government may wish to consider how it could support Scotland’s smaller councils to develop tools that ‘unlock’ their data more effectively, and whether there are any opportunities to bring together data from multiple councils.

At the same time, experience in Glasgow has also highlighted the ongoing challenges around using individual-level data for engagement of families, even when data has been successfully shared. This raises questions around whether responsibility for resolving data sharing issues would be better managed at a national level, to avoid individual councils all separately trying to resolve the same challenges.

Targeting and reach

Early reflections from the DoCs highlight that even where administrative data is extremely helpful in focusing support, it may miss key groups, (such as working families who are not claiming Universal Credit) so there may be limits to using this data exclusively for targeting/engagement. How ‘wide’ the targeting and reach of place-based interventions that aim to ultimately reduce child poverty should go is also a topic that needs careful reflection. Should they include families not on specific benefits, people without children under 16, people outside the local area? How far should initiatives with an employability focus (including ILMs) target those who are ‘employment ready’ rather than those in need of more extensive pre-employability support? Findings from both pathfinders highlight the potential tensions between a more open approach and prioritising resources so that ‘core’ target groups receive sufficiently intensive support. (This was an issue raised by professionals as a potential problem – they did not give examples of families from core groups being turned away).

Sustainability of holistic support approaches

The holistic support approach clearly has the potential to engage families who are otherwise reticent about reaching out for support, through support workers building trusted relationships with them, and fully exploring their support needs. However, it also requires careful consideration to ensure sustainability as demand grows. The evolution of roles within Glasgow Helps, including the addition of the Service Advisor role, provides a potential model in terms of how best to provide holistic support efficiently at different levels of intensity. As the DoCs develop, it will also be important to consider how to avoid clients becoming too dependent on specific key workers and to consider appropriate exit strategies.

Partnership working

Both pathfinders show that partnership working is fundamental in improving outcomes for families. However, challenges around linking clients to mental health support and around accessing appropriate housing were both mentioned as potential barriers to positive outcomes in Glasgow. This echoes similar themes in Dundee and highlights the need for similar projects in other areas to consider how to build and strengthen links to these forms of support from the outset. The Scottish Government should also consider whether there is a need for a greater national focus on the role of mental health and housing in relation to tackling child poverty, and how this could be supported and strengthened.

Quantifying impacts on families

Finally, this evaluation highlights the challenges of quantifying impacts on families. The next phase of the Glasgow programme includes more specific, time-bound targets around reducing child poverty; its ability to meet these in the wards being targeted will be a harder test of impact than has been applied so far. Each DoC in Glasgow is developing its own monitoring and evaluation plans. The Scottish Government should consider how best to ensure that these are informed by learning from elsewhere (including from the break-even tool developed for Dundee) and that learning from them in turn informs other projects and partnerships.