Child poverty pathfinders in Dundee and Glasgow: phase two evaluation

7. Design and development of the Glasgow pathfinder

Introduction

As discussed in chapter 1, Glasgow’s pathfinder has involved significant evolution and learning since its inception in 2022 and expects to continue to iterate and learn as it implements its plan for 2024-2027. This chapter briefly summarises key features of its early development, subsequent evolution, and plans for the future, drawing particularly on the original and revised ‘Project Initiation Documents’ (PIDs) for the Glasgow pathfinder, as shared with the evaluation team. It is intended to provide a broad overview to set the context for later findings chapters. The reports produced by the University of Glasgow (UofG) Research Practice Collaboration (RPC, discussed below) and the Improvement Service contain more detail on the evolution of, and rationale for, different elements of the Glasgow pathfinder (see Cruywagen and McNulty 2022, 2023, Cruywagen 2023, and Cruywagen and McNulty 2024, GCC / Improvement Service 2023).

Defining the Glasgow pathfinder

Providing a simple, concise description of the Glasgow pathfinder is challenging. However, drawing on key features highlighted by the RPC reports, the two Project Initiation Documents (PIDs), and stakeholder interviews, the Glasgow pathfinder:

• Encompasses an ambitious, city-wide, evolving programme of activity, all of which is aimed at the ultimate goal of achieving whole system change, in order to drive down child poverty
• Is driven forward by a Multi-Agency Change Capacity Team (MACT)
• Has the concept of ‘no wrong door’ as a guiding principle and aim
• Is intended to innovate, test and learn – the RPC describe the pathfinder as an ‘incubator’ for new ideas and ways of working, and as a ‘test bed’ where strategies for system change can be refined.

Each of these features is elaborated on below.

The Glasgow pathfinder is not ‘a service’ or ‘an intervention’ that supports families in poverty, or even a collection of such services or interventions. Although it has invested in the design or further development of services, these continue to be seen as ‘learning’ projects. It is hoped that learning from both these projects and the wider activities of the pathfinder will eventually lead to system change being embedded across all services supporting families in Glasgow, not only those currently closely linked to the pathfinder. This is an important point as it has shaped the approach to this external evaluation and how we report on impacts for families in chapter 8.

Development of the pathfinder

The roots of the Glasgow pathfinder can be traced back to the Christie Commission’s 2011 call for public service reform, and later to work in 2019 to map out a ‘Glasgow Vision’ for the multi-agency effort required to tackle the city’s complex challenges. However, its formal development began in early 2022, following a series of workshops with city partners with a role in supporting children and families.

The initial delivery plan covered June 2022 to September 2023 (subsequently extended to mid-2024, when the next PID was agreed). A PID for the next phase of the pathfinder, now renamed ‘the Child Poverty Programme’, was drafted in April 2024 and revised in August to reflect feedback from the pathfinder Board. Activity for the next phase started from summer 2024 and is expected to run to 2027. As the Child Poverty Programme is an extension of the pathfinder, and this evaluation covers both activities that began under the 2022-2023/4 pathfinder and some that were developed as part of the 2024-27 ‘programme’, the two terms are used interchangeably here.

At the time of writing this report, it was expected that the Glasgow Programme will set out a longer-term, 10-year action plan in 2025, providing further detail on the long-term shared public sector reform approach for Glasgow.

Aims

The initial 2022 PID for the pathfinder set out two key aims:

• To deliver an ‘at scale’ exemplar of the ‘no wrong door’ concept across Glasgow within 18 months, and
• To demonstrate the benefits of a whole system approach to tackling child poverty consistent with the Christie Principles.

The PID did not suggest that the pathfinder would necessarily achieve measurable reductions in child poverty in the city over this early 18-month period (there are no specific targets mentioned), but rather that it would identify and make the case for the changes needed to achieve this in the longer-term.

The 2024 PID for the next phase retains a focus on the Christie principles, but includes more specific, time-bound goals on child poverty reduction in specific wards, as well as a strengthened focus on improving user voice. Specifically, it sets three-year target outcomes for prevention activity to be undertaken in ‘booster’ wards to:

• Lift 10% of families from deep poverty and into relative poverty, with continued improvement expected thereafter.
• Lift 10% of families from just under the poverty threshold out of poverty.
• Prevent 10% of families currently just above the poverty threshold from falling into relative poverty.

In addition to setting overarching aims for the pathfinder, the initial 2022 PID identified three key barriers preventing Glasgow from making progress in tackling child poverty and set a goal of turning these into ‘enablers’ by working to understand and overcome them. These were:

• Data, including better use of data, and more effective data sharing
• Accountability and culture, including barriers around where governance or accountability for ‘tackling child poverty’ sits, a perceived tendency to focus on outputs rather than outcomes, and cultural barriers to changing ways of working
• Funding and commissioning, including barriers relating to funding silos and rules which mean that funding cannot be pooled or used in more creative ways to address complex challenges like child poverty.

These three barriers also remain a focus for the 2024-27 child poverty programme.

No wrong door

The concept of ‘no wrong door’ (NWD) was central to the initial vision in Glasgow and remains so. The initial PID identifies a number of key features associated with the ‘NWD’ model, which is often summarised as “the right support, in the right place, at the right time”, including:

• Citizens, including families at risk of poverty, are provided with consistent and comprehensive support
• People are able to access what they need regardless of where and how they engage, whether directly or through appropriate and effective onward referral
• Person-centred, holistic support is provided using case management techniques, and
• People are supported through initial crisis or need “onto building resilience and self-management”.
• Subsequent refinement of the NWD vision, as articulated on the NWD network webpage, emphasises that Glasgow’s NWD approach is collaborative, person-centred, preventative, data informed, community led, and learning led.

Multi-Agency Change Capacity Team (MACT)

The Scottish Government’s funding for the Glasgow pathfinder, both for the early phase and for the 2024-2027 plan, has largely contributed to part-funding (with GCC) a multi-agency team of staff to work on developing, delivering and driving the pathfinder. This ‘Multi-Agency Change Capacity Team’ (MACT) was repeatedly described in interviews as a critical element of the Glasgow pathfinder, reflecting the fact that ‘whole system change’ requires dedicated resource and collaboration between multiple partners. The team, which initially included around 30 staff, covers a wide range of skills, including: programme, change, performance and financial management; data, research and analysis; legal and procurement; service design; financial inclusion and housing; and communication and engagement. MACT members are drawn from GCC (particularly the financial inclusion and employability teams), as well as secondees from pathfinder partners, such as Glasgow Council for Voluntary Services and UofG, or from elsewhere in the local authority.

Workstreams and focus

Six interdependent workstreams were initially established for the pathfinder to organise activities intended to deliver whole systems change and improve support for families. These were: (1) "No wrong door" implementation, (2) service development and testing, (3) accountability and culture, (4) data, (5) funding and commissioning, and (6) programme management and support. The 2024-2027 PID for the next phase of the pathfinder increased the number of workstreams to nine. These continue to reflect the elements identified in the workstreams above but have expanded and/or separated out some of these elements into different streams and added a new workstream around place-based programmes. More detail on the original and revised workstreams is provided in boxes 7.1 and 7.2, below.

Box 7.1: Original Glasgow pathfinder workstreams

• No wrong door (NWD). This workstream focused on establishing and embedding a NWD model (as described above) in Glasgow. In the early stage of the pathfinder, the NWD approach to working with families in Glasgow was demonstrated via the work of Glasgow Helps, a service established by GCC during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide assistance to vulnerable citizens in the city (more background on Glasgow Helps is included in the following chapter). The NWD workstream has also focused on developing a wider ‘NWD network’ of third and public sector partners, particularly among services identified by the pathfinder team as likely to be in contact with low-income families. The aim is that this network will create and embed ‘NWD’ ways of working within member (or ‘partner’) organisations.
• Services and campaigns. This strand of the Glasgow pathfinder’s work focused on developing and testing services for families that addressed gaps in support in a way that was assessed as having potential to be transformational (not ‘business as usual’). The intention was to generate learning to inform the development of the pathfinder. The University of Glasgow supported the pathfinder with developing a template (an ‘Assessment and Reflection matrix’) to assess whether potential ‘pathfinder’ services or activities had the potential to contribute to these and other key pathfinder aims. Specific services developed or extended in the early phase included: Glasgow Helps in Early Years Establishments^[23], Eligible 2s^[24], Financial Inclusion for Disabled families^[25], the Energy Support Campaign^[26], and employability interventions aimed at parents^[27].
• Accountability and culture. This workstream was intended to help drive transformational culture change across all organisations working to eliminate child poverty in Glasgow. It encompassed both ‘formal’ elements, such as work on developing new governance arrangements and new approaches to measuring outcomes, and ongoing influencing work led by the MACT aimed at effecting change in culture, values and ways of working across city partners.
• Data. The data workstream focused on maximising the use and usefulness of data in informing the targeting and delivery of support to reduce child poverty. Activities included collation and analysis of existing data; exploring new approaches for effective and secure gathering, management and sharing of data; and acquisition or development of supporting technology (e.g. case management software).
• Funding and commissioning. This focused on increasing funding flexibility and reducing silos and duplication, in order to support a more joined-up approach to funding and commissioning services to tackle child poverty.
• Programme management and support, which focused on securing resources and on financial monitoring.

Box 7.2: 2024-2027 Glasgow pathfinder workstreams

• City governance: Aims to establish effective governance through the Glasgow Community Planning Partnership (GCPP) to ensure shared commitment and accountability mechanisms for tackling child poverty across Glasgow.
• Performance management: Focused on developing new performance frameworks (including with GCPP) to better evidence the value of partnership working and drive system change.
• No wrong door: Building on work begun in 2022-23, this continues to focus on building networks across the city to reduce fragmentation and duplication of services and work towards an integrated system, that ensures people can access the right support, at the right time, wherever they present.
• Policy alignment and funding flexibility: This aims to align policies and funding streams to enable more effective resource allocation and flexible spending.
• Commissioning and procurement: Aims at redesigning commissioning and procurement processes to empower practitioners and service users while maintaining financial accountability.
• Data and insights: Focused on more effective use of data and research to inform service design and evaluate effectiveness.
• Data sharing: Focused on establishing secure and effective data sharing practices between the council and partners.
• Design and innovation: Focused on incorporating user voice into service design.
• Place-based programme: Aims to support families in communities at greater risk of child poverty through targeted place-based interventions.

As part of the place-based programme workstream, the next phase of the pathfinder will involve three ward-based ‘test and learn’ ‘Demonstration of Change’ (DoC) projects, aimed at working intensively and holistically with families either in or ‘on the cusp of’ poverty. At the time evaluation fieldwork took place, all three were at an early stage, with only one having started offering support to families.

A further two DoC projects involve re-design of the financial inclusion service offer in Glasgow and an Intermediate Labour Market initiative, ‘Clients to Colleagues’, aiming to deliver at least 100 sustainable jobs over three years to families in poverty (including within the wards where the place-based DoC are taking place).

Key pathfinder partners

Both the multi-agency approach and the breadth of the Glasgow pathfinder means that there are numerous partners involved in different ways. Though by no means a comprehensive list (which would quickly date, given the expanding number of partners), some of the key partners in the Glasgow pathfinder as of late 2024/early 2025 are listed in Box 7.3.

Box 7.3: Key Glasgow pathfinder partners

• Community members (parents, carers, and families): The pathfinder emphasises engaging directly with families impacted by poverty to understand their needs and ensure services are shaped by them. This is a particular focus in the ward-based DoC projects.
• Glasgow City Council: The council plays a central role in funding, coordinating, and implementing the pathfinder. They employ most members of the MACT, while others are seconded from partners (including Third Sector partners and University of Glasgow).
• Scottish Government: The Scottish Government provides part-funding and national policy direction for the pathfinder, working closely with GCC on how the pathfinder can contribute to national goals. Scottish Government policy professionals have been key partners in the development of the pathfinder.
• Third-Sector organisations: A large number of third sector organisations in Glasgow are involved in the pathfinder in a range of ways, including (but not limited to): as referral partners for Glasgow Helps, as delivery partners or leads in the DoC projects, and as members of the wider ‘No wrong door’ network (see above).
• Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector (GCVS): GCVS is an umbrella organisation for Glasgow’s third sector. GCVS staff members have been actively involved in leading pathfinder activity, particularly through the NWD network (with a member of GCVS staff seconded for a period to co-lead this), but also in other workstreams such as commissioning and procurement.
• Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP): Again, the pathfinder has various links to the HSCP, including bringing a senior HSCP leader into the MACT to draw on their experience of leading on long-term system and culture change around the care system in Glasgow.
• Educational institutions (Schools and Nurseries): Schools and nurseries serve as vital access points for reaching families and delivering services linked to the pathfinder, such as Glasgow Helps in Early Years Establishments.
• Other Public Sector organisations: Other public sector organisations like the NHS, Police Scotland, and Scottish Fire and Rescue have been involved with pathfinder discussions and activities in various capacities, particularly as referral partners or through the NWD network. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Social Security Scotland have been key partners in relation to data.
• University of Glasgow (UofG): UofG has been an integral part of the pathfinder’s approach to embedding research, reflection and evaluation into the approach, through its Research Practice Collaboration (RPC) with the pathfinder.
• The Improvement Service: The Improvement Service has provided external support around documentation, process development, and performance management, measurement and analysis.
• Centre for Civic Innovation (CCI): A citizen-centred design team within GCC, responsible for establishing a design-led approach to the understanding of societal shifts and civic experiences within the city. It led on the development of the Child Poverty Dashboard and is leading on ensuring the citizen voice is integral to service redesign work via the DoC projects.
• Glasgow Community Planning Partnership (GCPP): The pathfinder MACT have worked closely with GCPP to develop new outcomes that put tackling family poverty at the heart of the Local Outcomes Improvement Plan (LOIP), a 10-year plan which sets the criteria against which service delivery across the city will be assessed.

Research, monitoring and evaluation of the Glasgow pathfinder

There is an extensive and ongoing programme of evaluation, research and monitoring around the Glasgow pathfinder. This includes:

• An ongoing ‘Research Practice Collaboration’ (RPC) between the UofG and the pathfinder. This collaboration has been ongoing from the start of the pathfinder. Two University of Glasgow academics, one of whom is seconded and embedded within the MACT, have produced a number of research reports (see Cruywagen and McNulty, 2021, 2022, 2023a, 2023b, 2024, and Cruywagen 2023), drawing particularly on qualitative reflective interviews with pathfinder stakeholders, reflecting on progress and learning, as well as evaluations of specific elements of pathfinder or related activities (including an evaluation of Glasgow Helps in 2021).
• Monitoring, research and evaluation of, or relating to, the pathfinder undertaken by the pathfinder or their partners. The pathfinder has its own internal monitoring and evaluation function, led by the pathfinder’s Benefits Realisation Officer, who coordinates and supports this activity. Various in-house research and evaluation reports on individual elements of the pathfinder’s activity have been produced.
• External support and review by the Improvement Service, particularly via the ‘Gateway Reviews’ co-produced with the University of Glasgow RPC.
• Work undertaken to develop a new city-wide performance framework and outcome measures focused on system change and tackling child poverty. As of early 2025, these outcome measures were still in draft form, but the 2024 PID states that it anticipates that these will be used “to inform the measures of success” of the 2024-27 Child Poverty Programme’s activities. (See further discussion in chapter 9).

Some of the evaluation and research referred to above has been shared with the Ipsos evaluation team and is referred to in parts of this report. However, it was agreed with the Scottish Government and the Glasgow pathfinder that fully summarising, or critically appraising, this substantial wider evidence base would not be appropriate within this evaluation.

Contribution of this evaluation to evaluating and learning about the Glasgow pathfinder

As discussed in chapter 1, the scope and timing of this evaluation did not neatly align with the scope and timing of the Glasgow pathfinder. The planning phase for this phase 2 evaluation occurred when the Glasgow pathfinder was in the process of developing its 2024-2027 vision and plan. It was felt that focusing evaluation activities on what had happened to date would not be feasible or helpful, in part because ‘the story’ of the pathfinder to date was already being told by the RPC, the Improvement Service, and the pathfinder itself, but also because the pathfinder’s activities and thinking had already moved on by this point.

However, activities for the 2024-2027 phase of the programme were also at an early stage in 2024, when data collection for this study needed to take place. The DoC projects, for example, which were seen as a key test of the ability of the NWD approach to lift families out of poverty, were not yet delivering to parents (either at all or in sufficient numbers) to be able to explore impacts for families. Moreover, the extent of wider research and evaluation activities on and around the pathfinder meant requests for data and interviews from the external evaluation team inevitably risked adding to the burden on partners.

Taking these issues into account, this evaluation sought to focus on exploring early evidence of impacts and learning, with a particular focus on learning for other areas looking to embed system change or NWD approaches. It adopted a case study approach in relation to family impacts (chapter 8), focusing on learning from Glasgow Helps, the NWD network, intermediate labour market (ILM) initiatives linked to the pathfinder and early reflections from the three ward-based DoC projects, while interviews with professional stakeholders informed assessments of early system impacts, in chapter 9.

Glasgow evaluation theory of change

As in Dundee, the evaluation team also developed an updated theory of change for the Glasgow pathfinder following in-depth interviews and a workshop with key Glasgow partners (largely from the MACT) in December 2023. This is shown below (a screen-reader accessible text version is included in Appendix A). As in Dundee, it has been used by the evaluation team to help guide data collection and structure analysis, though given the discussion above on scope and timing, the evaluation has not explored every element in detail.

As the Glasgow pathfinder was described by partners at the workshop as being “in a mode of change”, this theory of change was intended to be at a summary level, and to be broad enough to accommodate both what the pathfinder had delivered to date and what it hoped to achieve in the future.

Inputs (Resources in):

• Funding - including flexibility to use funding in new/joined up ways (existing, not just new money)
• Citizens/families  
• Core multi-agency team driving change
• Multiple wider partners bringing time, organisaitonal culture, ideas, mindset/willingness to do things differently.
• Leadership support and permission to work in new ways
• Tools to support case management (e.g. AdvicePro)
• Monitoring and evaluation resource
• Data, learning and evidence – Inc. early learning (e.g. Financial Inclusion Officers in Schools), other PSR reform (e.g. the Promise), wider data (GCC, DWP etc), and from the pathfinder itself (feeding back in).

Activities (Things we do):

• Delivery of NWD model: Person-centred, holistic, NWD approach implemented across city, including through Glasgow Helps, specific targeted services and campaigns, and wider network of third sector and other organisations working with families.
• Engaging families at risk of poverty
• Holistic needs assessments
• Referrals to trusted partners
• Advocacy to navigate system
• Ongoing review, support and follow-up

System / service redesign:
Multiple relationship building, engagement and development activities, including:

• Citizen engagement / service redesign activities
• NWD sector / cross-sector workshops to develop vision
• Activities to understand/engage with existing resource (services, data, funding)
• Work to identify barriers and develop actions to address them
• Development of monitoring frameworks
• Developing new ideas/innovations to test.

Outputs (Deliverables):

• Families:
• Numbers (and types/circumstances) of families engaged through NWD, including:
• Number initially signed-up
• Number of HNAs (or other needs assessments) conducted
• Length of engagement
• Numbers and types of referrals/support provided
• Organisations / systems:
• Number of partner engaged (to diff degrees) with NWD
• Number partner events
• New agreed models of delivery / joint working arrangements
• New data outputs and monitoring and evaluation outputs and tools
• DPIAs/ data sharing agreements to use data in new ways & no. of projects they inform
• Funding flexibilities and financial resources secured
• Number of new services developed though pathfinder (including those tested and dropped)

Short-term outcomes / aims

• Families:
• Easier access to the right support
• Immediate / basic needs met (e.g. food, fuel, urgent housing repairs, etc.)
• Underlying issues identified
• Organisations / systems:
• More partners engaged
• Improved trust between partners
• Partners fully engaged in co-creating NWD model
• Developed effective methods to engage citizens in system design

Medium-term outcomes / aims

• Families:
• Increased engagement with services
• Underlying needs/issues addressed (multiple, but including: increased income from benefits; addressing employability barriers; mental health stability; building confidence/hope)
• Organisations / systems:
• More effective joint working in evidence
• Shared culture/values
• NWD model implemented
• Gaps in services filled
• Data being used effectively (barriers to sharing overcome)
• Citizens routinely engaged with service development

Long-term outcomes / aims

• Families:
• Empowered to make change for themselves
• Move into employment / improve employment
• Financially, socially and emotionally secure
• Resilient and less reliant on services
• Organisations / systems:
• Fully integrated, person-centred, NWD approach to supporting people in poverty embedded and sustainable across all partners, supported by shared outcome and performance frameworks.
• Cross-cutting (short-long term) aim: Learning re. the system, what works/doesn’t work, and barriers, applying this to evolving system re-design, and sharing it more widely (partners/Scottish Government/other local authorities)

All ultimately leading to a reduction in child poverty.