Tackling Child Poverty External Reference Group minutes 06 February 2025

Attendees and apologies

•  Julie Humphreys, Director, Tackling Child Poverty and Social Justice (Chair)
• Chris Birt, Joseph Rowntree Foundation
• Greg Colgan, Chief Executive Dundee City Council on behalf of SOLACE
• John Dickie, Child Poverty Action Group
• Peter Kelly, Poverty Alliance
• SallyAnn Kelly, Aberlour
• Colin Lee, CEMVO Scotland (technical issues prevented Colin from joining for the full meeting)
• Rachel McAdams, Public Health Scotland
• Anna Ritchie Allan, National Advisory Council on Women and Girls/Close the Gap
• Satwat Rehman, One Parent Families Scotland
• Matthew Sweeney, COSLA
• Claire Telfer, Save the Children

Observers

• Stephen Sinclair, Poverty & Inequality Commission

Secretariat

Officials, Scottish Government

 

Items and actions

Item 1: Welcome, Introductions and Declarations of interest

The Chair welcomed attendees to the first External Reference Group meeting, noting the agenda and requested any declaration of interests be recorded.

Item 2: Context and Aims of the Expert Working Group

The focus of the meeting today was the engagement and consultation process for the third and final delivery tackling child poverty delivery plan. It is hoped that the Group can leverage its collective expertise and knowledge and experience to enhance the Delivery Plan building on the learning to date.  It was important to recognise that stakeholders have already provided views on policy decisions; delivery mechanisms and budget required and this will be the starting position for the delivery plan.  Therefore whatever is put in place will draw on that and seek views on how we might refine or build on the approach to date.

In discussion, the members noted:

• The importance of ongoing engagement between UKG and SG given the focus both have on Child Poverty. Understanding the cumulative impact will be important of different decisions in the devolved and reserved space.  To that end it would be useful to explore opportunities for the Group to engage UKG
• The Team Scotland approach will remain important across all partners but the primacy of the leadership role which SG plays is vital to enable and create the conditions for successful delivery
• It is vital that the next Delivery Plan focuses on the three drivers of child poverty reduction and that SG continues to the wider system to maintain this focus. In addition, it would be important to  balance action on the drivers with wider policy interventions to ensure maximum impact
• Engagement should be realistic - scope and boundaries should be established to support meaningful dialogue; honesty and feedback loops need to be in place
• It will be important to build on the evidence base and be as clear, as possible in the context, what is meant by a ‘framework’ plan
• The importance of cross party engagement was noted to support consensus around the plan
• Discussions should continue during the consultation process, ensuring that there is a balance of ambition with realistic delivery which are in turn able to inform choices for the draft Budget 2026/27 which will need to allow for flexibility and choice

Item 3: Terms of Reference

The Chair asked for any amendments or comments on the Terms of Reference to be placed into the chat for the secretariat to take forward accordingly.

In discussion, it was noted to include measures of success, such as agreeing a delivery plan that will meet child poverty targets within the ToR.

Item 4: Engagement approach and written call for evidence

SG official presented the current thinking around the engagement approach, noting two guiding principles:

• Flexibility and agility to respond to opportunities and to enable stakeholders to participation via different routes
• Leveraging the expertise of partners and their existing networks and relationships with communities and families to support meaningful engagement

An overview of the suite of planned engagement was provided, including: establishing the External Reference Group;  a written call for evidence; Scottish Parliament engagement;  workshops arranged around key themes and targeted groups; lived experience engagement with children and young people and adults, parents and carers; Ministerial engagement, development of Impact Assessments and evidence reviews & modelling.  

In discussion, members noted:

• The importance of drawing on existing work, particularly around lived experience to avoid consulting for its own sake and that views provided already are not simply repeated
• The importance of identifying the gaps in the existing evidence and therefore focussing engagement to address them
• Consideration should be given to creative ways to engage with stakeholders and people with lived experience. Previous engagement activity on inequalities made use of videos and other outputs which sought to create a more inclusive approach to engaging and should be considered
• It may be useful to convene stakeholder discussions with policy officials who lead on the policy components which contribute to Child Poverty reduction
• Utilising the expertise of frontline organisations to conduct engagement in a sensitive way will be paramount and ensure that any engagement is focused and sensitive
• Drawing Women’s Poverty and Child Poverty more closely together will be an important element of the engagement and the National Advisory Group on Women and Girls could facilitate engagement with grassroots organisations
• Regular feedback loops are important and should be included at the heart of the consultation
• The root causes of child poverty are well understood and therefore it is important to focus solutions based on the evidence base and strongest case for next steps
• Local Child Poverty Action Reports should be considered as sources of good practice already underway and in highlighting barriers for local systems
• A written call for evidence should be supplemented by wider engagement to ensure that as many voices and interests can contribute to the process

The Chair thanked members for their comments and suggestions and reflected on the important work underway way to deliver the PfG commitment on  Whole Family Support, including financial flexibility, data sharing and community planning. A paper on this will be shared at the next Child Poverty Programme Board, which will be shared with members of this group when it is finalised.

Item 5: Any Other Business and next steps

Members were thanked for their contributions to the meeting and that the cycle of meetings were likely to be every two months but the Group’s views on frequency were very welcome.