Advice to Scottish Government on the Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-26

Date: 2nd February 2022
Category: Child poverty

---

The Poverty and Inequality Commission has told Scottish Government it must use all levers available to it to end child poverty. The report calls for much clearer actions in the next Child Poverty Delivery Plan, with regards to what impact Scottish Government expects its actions to have on the targets and how it will measure this.

Tackling child poverty must be at the core of design and delivery of a wide range of policies including economic development, employability, skills, education, transport, childcare, social security, housing and the transition to net zero.

When taking this approach, the Commission says the Delivery Plan must join up action across policy areas and look at the needs of families as a whole. This includes thinking about families’ experiences, and the range of strengths they bring and barriers that they face. This information can help policymakers to understand where policies need to join up.

Recommendations made within the report include:

• Scottish Government is likely to need to increase the Scottish Child Payment beyond £20 per week to meet the interim child poverty targets.
• Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland should make sure that families get all the social security benefits they are entitled to.
• Scottish Government should invest in childcare and transport infrastructure to reduce costs for families and enable parents to work.
• Scottish Government should invest in employability and skills, and work with employers to address the barriers to work faced by some parents, particularly disabled parents.
• Scottish Government must make an impact on child poverty as a measure of the success of its housing policies.

Read the report in full here.