Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan: Progress Report 2025-26

Executive Summary

This progress report sets out the range of action taken between April 2025 and March 2026 to tackle child poverty in Scotland. This is the final of four annual progress reports published in relation to ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’, the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for 2022-26.

In the face of continued and unprecedented challenges to public finances and family budgets, this report details the wide-ranging action the Scottish Government has taken to tackle the cost of living and drive continued progress against Scotland’s child poverty targets.

Steps taken in the past year to further strengthen the support available to families include:

• Launching the £3 million Bright Start Breakfasts fund, awarding funding to 490 breakfast clubs including 142 new clubs. This has created almost 9,000 breakfast club places, supporting up to 20,000 primary and special school children.
• Tackling the cost of transport by abolishing peak fares on Scotrail services, delivering free foot passenger travel on inter-island ferries for under 22 year old islanders, extending the national concessionary ferry scheme, and introducing a £2 bus fare cap across the Highlands.
• Expanding the Citizens Advice Scotland Council Tax Debt Project across all 32 Local Authorities, with clients supported to make over £2.8 million through Council Tax related financial gains.
• Further strengthening support for disabled people and carers by completing the transfer of awards to Adult Disability Payment and Carer Support Payment and launching the Carer Additional Person Payment expected to benefit around 16,000 people in 2026-27.
• Expanding our Fairer Futures Partnerships into eight more Local Authority areas, bringing the total number of partnerships to sixteen, with ‘Adopt and Adapt’ funding allocated to all other Local Authorities to allow them to test innovative solutions and engage more deeply with learning generated from this approach.
• Expanding our Fairer Funding approach, providing multi-year grants worth over £130 million over two years to 51 third sector organisations delivering essential services and action on child poverty.
• Publishing the Housing Emergency Action Plan, setting out a range of new and enhanced action to tackle the housing emergency in Scotland. This included doubling the funding available for housing acquisitions from £40 million to £80 million and investing an additional £2 million to help to families with children move from temporary accommodation into settled homes.
• Supporting passage of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 which will help to strengthen renters’ rights, prevent homelessness, and support those who are experiencing domestic abuse.
• Providing immediate support to families by reinvesting funding previously committed to the Two Child Limit Payment. This includes providing an additional £5.5 million for the Scottish Welfare Fund and allocating over £3.5 million to charities to deliver emergency support – with Children First and Aberlour helping over 5,000 families and 184 other organisations delivering support.

This is in addition to our continued investment in actions delivered over the life of this plan, including devolved employability support, free bus travel for under 22s and disabled people, and our package of social security payments including the Scottish Child Payment.

Beyond our continued focus on delivery, we also undertook wide-ranging engagement with stakeholders, parents and children and young people to inform development of the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for 2026-31.

Published on 12 March 2026, ‘Bringing Hope, Building Futures’, provides a robust framework with concrete action to drive continued progress in eradicating child poverty.