Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan: progress report 2024-25

Ministerial Foreword – First Minister

Eradicating child poverty is my driving mission and the top priority of the government I lead. We know that experience of poverty is deeply damaging to children and their families, and sustained actions are required to break the cycle of poverty. By focusing on this work alongside this government’s wider priorities - growing Scotland’s economy, tackling the climate emergency, and ensuring high quality and sustainable public services – we can make a difference.

Each of this government’s four priorities are intrinsically linked. We cannot support every child in Scotland to meet their full potential without efficient, effective and responsive public services, and families cannot thrive without a strong wellbeing economy which provides fair work opportunities for parents and our young people alike. As we look toward the future, we must also take action to tackle the climate emergency in a way that protects low income households, captures the potential for our economy to grow, and shares that prosperity.

As set out in this report, our action and focus on child poverty is making a difference – both to the lives of families, and to poverty rates in Scotland. Rates of both relative and absolute child poverty fell between 2022-23 and 2023-24 to stand nine percentage points below the UK average. While the Joseph Rowntree Foundation predict child poverty will rise in other parts of the UK by 2029, they highlight policies such as our Scottish Child Payment, and our commitment to mitigate the two-child limit, “are behind Scotland bucking the trend”.

Although this is promising, the Scottish Government is under no illusion as to the scale of the challenge we face in meeting the 2030 targets – and delivering the future that the children of Scotland deserve. Since 2018, we have taken considerable action, despite the impacts of the Covid pandemic, the cost of living crisis, Russia’s illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine and continued UK Government austerity. We have also developed robust evidence on the need for action which is balanced across not only the three drivers of poverty reduction, but also across the short, medium and long term – ensuring that children and their families are able to thrive now, and in the future.

In the final year of this Parliament, my Programme for Government is focused on delivery and hope. Continued delivery of action which makes a tangible difference to the lives of families in Scotland and tackles the pressures they face as part of our cost of living guarantee. Hope, because we continue to drive progress toward our 2030 targets and the eradication of child poverty – a future which would see no child’s life limited because of the economic circumstances into which they were born.

Strong leadership is also required at every level in Scotland to create the conditions for success. It will take all of us across the public sector, business, the third sector and communities themselves, to realise the change needed. My government is committed to working with partners across Scotland to identify solutions, and to develop a robust plan for further driving down poverty over the life of the next Parliament. This will, of course, include the implications of policies from the UK Government, and I hope that the delayed Child Poverty Strategy will deliver the change so sorely needed at a UK level.

We recognise that eradicating child poverty requires us to focus our efforts on supporting those at greatest risk of poverty, while also preventing families from experiencing poverty in the first place. In developing our next delivery plan, we will continue to take an intersectional approach to poverty, increasingly focusing our efforts on meeting the holistic and unique needs of families in the places that they live.

Ensuring that families can access the support they need, when and where they need it, is essential to our efforts. This requires our public services to be integrated, equipped and empowered to support families, to proactively offer the help families need, and to work across organisational boundaries to make sure support is easy to access. It also requires us to put greater trust in the people, communities and frontline workers who know what support is needed. Working in this way, prioritising the needs and experiences of families rather than services, is what we mean by Whole Family Support. This is the type of public service delivery that the Scottish Government will continue to champion. It will only be possible if we collaborate with all partners, across all sectors, to make it a reality, but we are committed to doing so.

Across the past year, we have made real progress in laying the foundations for this approach, working to develop local ways of working, grounded in flexible services which adapt to the needs of those who use them. This is deeply connected to the work of our Fairer Futures Partnerships, which have continued to grow across more Local Authorities.

By spreading and scaling what we know is working, we can deliver transformative change across all of Scotland and bring Whole Family Support to life across all communities in Scotland. This will help to deliver progress not only on child poverty, but also on our wider commitment to Keep the Promise.

Eradicating child poverty is the driving force behind the government I lead - because there is no greater long-term investment we can make in our future success as a nation.

By working together, we can deliver a future where no child lives in poverty.

Rt Hon John Swinney

First Minister