Tackling Child Poverty Locally: Principles, Priorities and Practicalities in Challenging Times

TACKLING CHILD POVERTY LOCALLY: PRINCIPLES,PRIORITIES AND PRACTICALITIES IN CHALLENGING TIMES

Stephen Sinclair and John H. McKendrick

Abstract

The 2010 Child Poverty Act placed new obligations to address childpoverty upon each of the national governments in Britain and all of thelocal authorities in England and Wales. Local authorities in Scotland do nothave the same legal requirement to tackle child poverty, but it is evident thattheir actions, in conjunction with local partners within the context ofCommunity Planning Partnerships, will be critical to the success of the ChildPoverty Strategy for Scotland introduced by the Scottish Government in 2011.At the present time, local interventions to tackle child poverty must beenacted under particularly challenging conditions, as measures to reduce childpoverty are undermined by a prolonged economic recession, fiscal austerity,reductions in UK welfare spending, and welfare reforms introduced by the UKgovernment which appear likely to increase the number of households andchildren experiencing poverty. This paper examines what measures Scottishlocal authorities, Community Planning Partnerships and other local bodiescould take to address child poverty at the local level and meet the nationalcommitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020.

Keywords: child poverty; Localism; Community Planning Partnerships.

Stephen Sinclair is Reader in Social Policy at Glasgow Caledonian University, where heundertakes research in the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health. Email:[email protected] H. McKendrick is a Senior Lecturer (Human Geography specialism) in the

Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Scottish Affairs 23.4 (2014): 454–485DOI: 10.3366/scot.2014.0044# Edinburgh University Presswww.euppublishing.com/scot

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Introduction: Tackling Child Poverty in Scotland Locally

The Child Poverty Act 2010 commits the UK Government to eradicate childpoverty by 2020 (Kennedy, 2010). The Scottish Government was compelledby the Act to produce a national child poverty strategy and, building on itsexisting work in this area (Sinclair and McKendrick, 2012), duly deliveredthe Child Poverty Strategy for Scotland (hereafter CPSS) in 2011 (ScottishGovernment, 2011). Both governments have constituted advisory bodies toreview progress (the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission for theUK (SMCPC, nd, a), and the Ministerial Advisory Group on Child Poverty inScotland (Scottish Government, nd). Both governments report annually onprogress toward the target (e.g. DWP and DoE, 2012; SMCPC, 2013a; andScottish Government, 2012, 2013a).Significantly, both governments acknowledge that “many of the key levers

to drive the changes needed . . . are at a local level” (Scottish Government,2011: 3); indeed, the Act placed additional responsibilities upon localauthorities and their statutory partners in England and Wales to preparelocal child poverty needs assessments to understand the drivers of childpoverty in their area, and, on the basis of this, to develop a joint child povertystrategy setting out the measures they propose to take to reduce and mitigatethe effects of local child poverty (Department for Education, 2010). Despitethe acknowledged importance of local action, the Child Poverty Act 2010placed no such additional statutory duties upon local authorities in Scotland.In reviewing how child poverty is tackled locally in Scotland, the objectives

of this paper are twofold. The primary aim of the paper is to appraise theprospects for effective local action in Scotland to tackle child poverty. At theoutset, three context-setting sections consider, respectively: the challenge ofdefining child poverty; evidence of the scale of the problem in Scotland;and the Scottish national policy context for tackling child poverty. Newempirical evidence from two surveys with key informants in Scottish localgovernment (leaders/CEOs and officers in local government) is presented andthen discussed in a section that considers principles, priorities and practicalsteps for tackling child poverty locally in Scotland. However, the layeringor juxtaposition of responsibility for tackling child poverty necessitatesconsideration of the wider fiscal context which, it is argued, currentlycompromises the potential for effective local action to eradicate child povertyin Scotland. Consideration of this broader context extends beyond asubstantive focus on child poverty and leads to the secondary aim of thepaper: to reflect on the pernicious implications for responsibility andaccountability that arise when there are tensions between central, devolved

Tackling Child Poverty Locally

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and local government. The concluding section of the paper summarises keyfindings and identifies lines of enquiry that need to be pursued.

Defining Child Poverty

As has been argued elsewhere, although poverty is always about ‘not havingenough’, it is a deceptively simple concept (McKendrick, 2014a). It is also amalleable concept, which necessitates clarification of its application in everydiscussion. In some respects, this is a straightforward matter for child povertyin Scotland and the UK. The Child Poverty Act 2010 provides four operationalmeasures of child poverty, each of which is, at least in part, defined by lowincome (Table 1).Clearly, low income lies at the heart of what government understands as

child poverty. Those outwith government (such as the Poverty Alliance andChild Poverty Action Group in Scotland) concur that low household income isof primary importance in defining and understanding poverty. Althoughdetailed considerations of the finer points of how poverty is conceived andmeasured are beyond the scope of this paper (see McKendrick, 2014b fordetail), some key points that are central to this appraisal of tackling childpoverty locally must be acknowledged.First, even the governments’ definition of child poverty comprises different

dimensions: at the same time, poverty is considered to be semi-permanent(the absolute measure that tracks change against an earlier point in time);contemporary (the relative measure that appraises conditions at a singlepoint in time); a hybrid of inputs and outputs (the ‘deprivation’ measurethat combines the input indicator of income and the output indicator ofdeprivation); and temporal (the persistent measure spans a three-year period).Each component is of value, and each draws upon household income, buteach also presents a distinctive interpretation of what constitutes poverty.There has, however, been a tendency to give greater focus to poverty as acontemporary condition, and the relative low income measure tends to bemost widely used in Scotland and beyond.Second, the framework of the Child Poverty Act 2010 indicators for

measuring child poverty and the statutory goal of ‘eradicating’ child povertyby 2020, cannot be taken as evidence of the permanence of thisconceptualisation and way of measuring child poverty. In 2011, the UKGovernment gave notice of its intention to start publishing informationon what it describes as ‘severe child poverty’ in the UK, using materialdeprivation indicators and the criteria of below ‘50% of household median


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income’, rather than the ‘below 70%’ of the existing material deprivation andrelative low income measure (DWP and DoE, 2011). Furthermore, early in2013, less than three years after the application of the 2010 Act, the UKgovernment consulted on an alternative way to measure child poverty, based

Table 1Measuring child poverty in the 2010 Child Poverty Act

Tier 1: Absolute low income

Number and proportion of children in households whose equivalised income beforehousing costs is below 60 per cent of inflation-adjusted UK median income in 2010/11.This is a measure of whether the poorest families are seeing their incomes rise inreal terms. Success is defined as when less than 5% of children live in householdswith absolute low income.

Tier 2: Relative low income

Number and proportion of children in households whose equivalised income beforehousing costs is below 60 per cent of UK median income in the same year. This is ameasure of whether the poorest families are keeping pace with the growth of incomesin the economy as a whole. Success is defined as when less than 10% of children live inhouseholds with relative low income.

Tier 3: Material deprivation and low income combined

Number and proportion of children that are both materially deprived and live inhouseholds whose equivalised income before housing costs is less than 70 per cent ofthe UK median in the current year. This is to provide a wider measure of children’sliving standards. Success is defined as when less than 5% of children live in householdswith material deprivation and low income combined.

Tier 4: Persistent low income

Number and proportion of children in households whose equivalised income beforehousing costs is below 60 per cent of UK median income for three of the previousfour years. This is a measure of whether or not families are consistently in aposition that their income keeps pace with the growth of incomes in the economy asa whole. At the time of writing, three years on from the introduction of the ChildPoverty Act 2010, the level of persistent low income that defines success has not beendefined.

Severe Poverty

Number and proportion of children that are both materially deprived and are inhouseholds whose equivalised income before housing costs is less than 50 per cent ofthe UK median in the current year. This was proposed after the 2010 Child Poverty Act.


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on the conceptualisation of poverty as a multi-dimensional bundle of inter-related problems (HM Government, Department for Work and Pensions,2012).). Although the existing indicator framework and statutory commitmentwas firmly defended – not least by the SMCPC (SMCPC, 2013b) – there wasalso support for more broadly-based measures (and conceptualisations) tocomplement the narrower, income-focused measures of the 2010 Act.

Third, until recently there was a dearth of data available to estimate levelsof local child poverty in Scotland, at the scale at which local interventionswere implemented. Although it would be wrong to suggest that Scotland nowhas an adequate local information base, recent developments have built uponlonger-standing data sources, such as free-school meal statistics for schools(Scottish Government, nd, b), with the Scottish Government developing amethodology for local authority-based estimates using Scottish HouseholdSurvey data (Scottish Government, 2010a), HMRC making available a localestimate of the relative low income child poverty measure for datazones andlocal authority areas (HMRC, 2013) and, most significantly of all, Bramley andWatkins (2013) completing a modelling exercise that generated estimates of28 measures of poverty and deprivation for datazones in Scotland. Lookingahead, it is increasingly likely that Scotland will have the resources to monitorthe impact of local interventions to tackle child poverty.Finally, and somewhat against this more positive note, it can be observed

that many analysts, policy officers and commentators utilise poverty andrelated concepts in a looser manner than might please the statisticians.Perhaps reflecting data availability to date, but also perhaps reflecting aprimary concern with the broader bundle of problems of which child povertyis merely part, rather than child poverty per se, commentators and analystshave been as likely to use area-based measures (living in the Most Depriveddatazones in Scotland), or to focus on multiple deprivation, as they have beento focus tightly on child poverty (as conceived, and evidenced by lowhousehold income).

Child Poverty in Scotland

Several striking features are evident when considering the contemporarycharacter and trends in child poverty in Scotland since the pledge to eradicateit was first made by the then Prime Minister in March 1999 (Blair, 1999).There is clear evidence of progress in reducing child poverty in Scotland.Approximately 190,000 fewer children were living in poverty in Scotland in2011/12, compared to 1996/97, using the headline measure of relative low


458

income poverty, before housing costs are deducted (Scottish Government,2013b). More than this, child poverty has fallen further in Scotland than in anyother part of the UK since 1999 (McKendrick and Sinclair, 2012a).

However, there is a need to temper the impression that tackling childpoverty has been an unqualified success in Scotland. On one hand, theimprovements are in no small part attributable to demographic factorsand the composition of low income households rather than due to theimpact of any distinctive policies introduced in Scotland during that time(Barham, 2011). Furthermore, progress in reducing in child poverty in Scotlandstalled for four years after 2005/06. Most significantly, progress halted beforethe impact of the current recession. Indeed, the initial target for child povertyin 2010 in Scotland to be half the 1999 level was not met, largely as a result ofpre-recession failings. More recent reductions in the number of children living

Figure 1Child Poverty in Scotland, 1994/95–2011/12

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

19

94

/9

5

19

95

/9

6

19

96

/9

7

19

97

/9

8

19

98

/9

9

19

99

/0

0

20

00

/0

1

20

01

/0

2

20

02

/0

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20

04

/0

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/0

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/0

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/0

8

20

08

/0

9

20

09

/1

0

20

10

/1

1

20

11

/1

2

Absolute Poverty %

Relative Poverty %

Material Poverty andLow Income %

Source: Scottish Government, Poverty And Income Inequality In Scotland, 2011–12.Notes: Calculations are before housing costs.


459

in poverty in Scotland (50,000 in the two years after 2009/10, for the relativemeasure, BHC), can be attributed to falling UK median incomes, at a timewhen the incomes of the very poorest in society were protected (whenwelfare income increased at the rate of RPI). Subsequent revisions in varyingwelfare income (first a change from RPI to CPI and then a capping of increasesto a maximum of 1%) are projected to herald a significant increase in thenumber of children living in poverty for the first time in a generation (Browneet al., 2013).

An additional layer of complexity at the current time is the apparentdiscord among different measures of child poverty. Using the after housingcosts approach favoured by the anti-poverty sector (McKendrick, 2014b),relative low income child poverty in Scotland appears to have fallen quitedramatically in recent years, but the same evidence suggests that absolutechild poverty has increased, while child material deprivation is also falling. Yet,there is no inconsistency across measures at the current time. The differenttrajectories for the two wholly income based measures reflects the fact thatalthough conditions have worsened for children living in low incomehouseholds (the increase in absolute low income poverty), conditions haveworsened at a far faster rate for children outwith low income households(hence the reduction in relative low income poverty). Preliminary analysissuggests that this, combined with a lowering of expectation (fewer parentsarticulating that they want goods that they cannot afford) and a change in theindicators that are used to measure child material deprivation, account for therecent reductions of children living in poverty according to the deprivation(plus income) measure. What these reflections affirm is that official povertystatistics require careful interpretation and that to understand changinglevels of child poverty necessitates considering the interactions between thedifferent measures.

Child poverty is not only a stubborn problem in Scotland, it is also onewhich is evident across the length and breadth of the country (Figure 2).Although the level of child poverty at the scale of Scottish local authoritiesranges considerably (from less than one in ten to over one in three children), itevidently affects children in all areas, and the consequences of the povertyexperienced by the 9% of children in Aberdeenshire are just as serious as thatexperienced by the 25% of children in West Dunbartonshire.

Furthermore, as Table 2 demonstrates, there are small areas with veryhigh concentrations of child poverty in every local authority in Scotland.For example, although East Dunbartonshire has the fourth lowest overall rateof child poverty in Scotland (10%), in the Barrhead ward one in every fourchildren lives in poverty (24%) and more than one half of all children live in


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Figure 2Child Poverty in Scottish Local Authorities, 2009

Shetland Islands

Orkney Islands

Aberdeenshire

East Dunbartonshire

East Renfrewshire

Eilean Siar

Perth and Kinross

Moray

Scottish Borders

Stirling

Argyll and Bute

East Lothian

Highland

Angus

Aberdeen City

Dumfries and Galloway

Falkirk

Midlothian

South Lanarkshire

West Lothian

Edinburgh, City of

Renfrewshire

South Ayrshire

SCOTLAND

Fife

North Lanarkshire

East Ayrshire

Clackmannanshire

Inverclyde

North Ayrshire

West Dunbartonshire

Dundee City

Glasgow City

Source: Scottish Government, Local Authority Level Proxy Poverty Data. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Social-Welfare/IncomePoverty/LAdataNote: child poverty is defined here as the proportion of children living in families inreceipt of out of work benefits or tax credits where their reported income is less than60% median income.


461

Table

2Localchild

povertyin

ScottishLocalAuthorities

LocalAuthority

%Child

Poverty

WardwithHighestLevelof

Child

Poverty

%(W

ard)

DatazonewithHighestLevelofChild

Poverty

% (DZ)

Glasgow

City

33Springburn

51%

Sighthill

(S01

0034

63)

83.3

Dundee

City

26East

End

36%

Dundee,Hilltown(S01

0011

66)

64.1

NorthAyrshire

25SaltcoatsandSteven

ston

35%

Steven

ston,Ardeer(S01004406)

59.9

West

Dunbartonshire

25Clydeb

ankCen

tral

31%

IZThirteen

(S01

0062

60)

52.8

Inverclyde

24InverclydeEast

Cen

tral

31%

Green

ock,TownCen

treandEast

Cen

tral

(S01

0040

94)

59.6

Clackmannanshire

23ClackmannanshireSouth

26%

Alloa,

South

andEast

(S01

0008

36)

60.8

East

Ayrshire

22Kilm

arnock

South

33%

Kilm

arnock,Shortlees

(S01

0013

24)

58.8

NorthLanarkshire

21AirdrieCen

tral

29%

Wishaw

,Craigneu

k(S01004569)

60.2

Fife

20Buckhaven

,Methiland

Wem

yssVillages

38%

Methil,

East

(S01

0028

53)

73.5

Edinburgh,Cityof19

Sighthill/G

orgie

35%

Green

dykes

andNiddrieMains(S01001982)67.1

Ren

frew

shire

19PaisleyNorthWest

31%

Paisley,Ferguslie

(S01

0052

47)

60.9

Midlothian

18Dalkeith/M

idlothianSouth

21%

Gorebridge

andMiddleton(S01

0041

49)

40.9

South

Ayrshire

18Ayr

North

33%

Ayr:Lochside,

Braeh

eadandWhitletts

(S01

0056

00)

54.2

South

Lanarkshire

18Rutherglen

Cen

tral

and

North

25%

Cam

buslang,Whitlawburn

andGreen

lees

(S01

0059

98)

61

WestLothian

18Whitburn

andBlackburn

25%

Livingston,Kn

ightsridge

(S01

0064

55)

47.6


462

Table

2(Cont.)

LocalAuthority

%Child

Poverty


Child

Poverty

%(W

ard)


Poverty

% (DZ)

Dumfriesand

Galloway

17NorthWestDumfries

27%

Stranraer,W

est(S02

0001

70)

57.5

Falkirk

17Grangemouth

22%

Bainsford

andLanglees(S01

0025

36)

50.9

AberdeenCity

16Northfield

32%

Cummings

Park

(S01

0001

89)

49.8

Highland

15InvernessCen

tral

27%

Wick,

South

(WickSouth)

51.4

Angus

14ArbroathEast

andLunan

25%

Arbroath,W

arddykes

(S01

0006

26)

47.9

ArgyllandBute

14Dunoon

22%

Dunoon(S01

0007

49)

44.4

East

Lothian

14MusselburghEast

and

Carberry

22%

IZEight(S01

0015

95)

44.9

Stirling

14Castle

29%

Stirling,

Borestone(S01

0061

00)

52

ScottishBorders

13Haw

ickandDen

holm

25%

Haw

ick,

Burnfootandarea

(S01

0053

82)

41.6

Moray

12ElginCityNorth

15%

IZNineteen(S01

0042

79)

37.9

Eilean

Siar

11Sgir’UigeagusCeannaTuath

nan

Loch

16%

Stornoway,W

est(S01

0023

64)

28.3

PerthandKinross

11PerthCityNorth

21%

Perth,Muirton(S01

0050

75)

57.2

East

Dunbartonshire

10Kirkintilloch

East

and

Twechar

23%

South

Castleh

illandThorn

(S01

0014

82)

44.2

East

Ren

frew

shire

10Barrhead

24%

Barrhead:Dunterlie,East

Arthurlie

and

Dovecothall(S01

0017

83)

57

Aberdeenshire

9FraserburghandDistrict

17%

Fraserburgh,HarbourandBroadsea

(S01

0005

64)

37.8


463

Table

2(Cont.)

LocalAuthority

%Child

Poverty


Child

Poverty

%(W

ard)


Poverty

% (DZ)

Orkney

Islands

8KirkwallEast/N

orthIsles

12%

Kirkwal,W

estl(S01004953)

20

ShetlandIslands

7ShetlandNorth

11%

Lerw

ick,

South

(S01

0054

99)

27.4

Source:EndChild

Poverty(201

1)


464

poverty in one small area within the Dunterlie, East Arthurlie and Dovecothallneighbourhood (57%). The majority of local authorities in Scotland have atleast one small area where more children live in poverty than those who donot. Child poverty is a local problem in every part of Scotland.

Tackling Child Poverty in Scotland

In order to understand the options available for local action to tackle childpoverty, it is first necessary to consider the national government’s ChildPoverty Strategy for Scotland. The CPSS sets out an ambitious aim: ‘Our visionis for a Scotland where no children are disadvantaged by poverty’ (ScottishGovernment, 2011: 1). The Strategy must be seen in relation to existingpolicies, in particular the Achieving Our Potential social inclusion strategy(Scottish Government, 2008), the Early Years Framework and Equally Wellreport on health inequalities and the Getting it Right for Every Child policy tosupport children and young people. Each policy sits within an overarchingNational Performance Framework, consisting of 16 National Outcomes and 50National Indicators. The National Outcomes which relate most closely to childpoverty are:

†5. ‘Our children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed’†7. ‘We have tackled the significant inequalities in Scottish society’†8. ‘We have improved the life chances for children, young people andfamilies at risk’

Before the CPSS was introduced, there was no National Indicator specificto child poverty, although there was a wider measure to ‘Decrease theproportion of individuals living in poverty’. However, a new Indicator relatingto children’s deprivation was added to the National Performance Frameworkin December 2011: to reduce the percentage of children in Scotlandexperiencing material deprivation (based on a suite of questions in theFamily Resources Survey) and low income (below 70% of UK median income).This is the third tier measure that is used to define child poverty in the2010 Act.Unsurprisingly, the Scottish Government declares in its child poverty

strategy that its existing devolved powers ‘restricts our ability to tacklepoverty’ and therefore states its intention to focus on those areas where itbelieves it is likely to have the greatest impact (2011: 4). Nevertheless, theScottish Government shares the UK Government’s belief that ‘interventionsand responses. . . must address the underlying causes of poverty, not just thesymptoms. Poverty is about much more than a lack of income’ (2011: 1).


465

However, other aspects of the CPSS suggest a different understanding of theseunderlying causes from that of the UK government. The Scottish Governmentdescribes its main aims in relation to child poverty as, firstly, maximisinghousehold resources and reducing pressure on household budgets among lowincome families; and secondly, improving children’s wellbeing and life chancesand tackling the underlying social and economic determinants of poverty.

The first of these aims refers to idea of the ‘social wage’ – not a term muchfavoured by the current UK government (nor many of its recent predecessors),but one which appeared in the Scottish Government’s first Annual Reporton child poverty (2012: 12), where among the examples of such provisionreferred to are concessionary travel, free prescription charges, addressing fuelpoverty, extending eligibility for free school meals, a freeze on Council Taxlevels and the preservation of Education Maintenance Allowances (EMAs),which were scrapped in England by the UK government in 2010. This focus isevident in the second Annual Report (Scottish Government, 2013a) where it isconceived as a focus on ‘pockets’ (as in ‘putting money in pockets’).

The second aim of the CPSS appears to place less emphasis on behaviouralexplanations for poverty than currently promoted by the UK government, andimplies that the causes are regarded as structural factors beyond individualcontrol. The CPSS places a strong emphasis on developing a preventativeapproach to child poverty and early intervention in the first few years ofchildren’s lives. This is reflected in the Scottish Government’s creation, inpartnership with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) andNHS, of an Early Years Taskforce and Early Years Change Fund. An emphasis onprevention and reallocating resources towards early intervention is not uniqueto the Scottish Government nor its CPSS, and reflects the principles of boththe Christie Commission on The Future Delivery of Public Services and theemphasis which the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland (2011), Sir Harry Burns,has placed on salutogenesis, i.e. promoting an asset-based approach to healthand well-being. In the second Annual Report, the second overarching focus forsuch child poverty interventions in Scotland is expressed in its focus on‘prospects’ (Scottish Government, 2013a).Among the other distinguishing features of the Scottish child poverty

strategy is a strong emphasis on measures to encourage and supportemployment, including a commitment to pay a living wage for publicemployees, and a Children and Young Services Bill. This Bill proposes to extendchildcare provision for 3 and 4 year olds and looked after 2 year olds to aminimum of 600 hours per year; although this commitment is qualified by thestatement that ‘it is unlikely that the Scottish Government or local partnerswill be able to devote significant new resources to supporting the costs of


466

childcare in the immediate future’ (Scottish Government, 2011: 20). Localpartners will be tasked with honouring this commitment, whatever theavailable resource base. In part, the CPSS, like much of social policy sincedevolution, is distinguished by reforms which it is not implementing (Centrefor Scottish Public Policy, 2005), such as not abolishing EMAs and seeking topreserve access to certain ‘passported’ benefits, such as free school meals forchildren. Significantly, many of these ‘passported’ benefits are administeredlocally. It is no surprise that the third and final overarching focus in the CPSSfor tackling child poverty is a focus on ‘places’.

Local Action to Tackle Child Poverty in Scotland

While it is evident that progress towards child poverty targets requiresappropriate action at the local level, the picture of local activity in Scotland is amixed one. An analysis of the first Single Outcome Agreements (SOAs), inwhich CPPs outline how they plan to meet agreed national objectives,undertaken in 2009 concluded that while child poverty was on Partnerships’agendas, it was not always a high priority (Telfer et al., 2009). For example,only four out of 32 SOAs stated that tackling child poverty was a priority; onlytwo SOAs set a local outcome to reduce child poverty; and only one SOAreferred to developing a local child poverty strategy. This suggests that childpoverty was not being tackled strategically, and no SOA clearly articulated howthe full range of local policy interventions could be used to tackle childpoverty. This interpretation should be qualified by the fact that subsequentresearch found that 68% of local authority officers who were heavily involvedin developing local child poverty strategies believed that their Partnership’sSOA did not report the full extent of local activity in this area (McKendrick andSinclair, 2012b: 15).This more recent research is worthy of further reflection in the context

of this paper. It involved two surveys of those responsible for developingand implementing local child poverty strategies: a short survey of six questionsdistributed to all Chief Executives and Council Leaders in Scotland, and alonger survey of 25 questions distributed to Council officers with a particularinterest in, or responsibility for, anti-poverty work. Both were administeredone year after the introduction of the CPSS and the surveys were distributedwith the assistance of the Improvement Service and with the assurancethat the findings would be interpreted by independent academics with nopolitical affiliation. Confidentiality was assured. 25 responses were receivedfrom the survey distributed to Officers across Scotland’s 32 local authorities


467

and CPPs (representing a 78% response rate), and 38 responses werereturned from Chief Executives and Council Leaders (a 59% response rate).The findings from these surveys confirmed that in 2012 child povertyremained an emerging rather than a primary issue in local areas; for example,no CPP/local authority in Scotland was reported to have a specific localchild poverty target, although 56% did have a more general poverty target,and 16% stated that they had plans to introduce a target specifically for childpoverty.Figure 3 shows that local action to address child poverty tends

towards the more routine, such as collecting evidence on the local level ofchild poverty (71%). More intensive activities are much less common;for example, only 14% of Partnerships report that they were developinglocal action plans, while only 5% applied a child poverty impact assessmentto their policy-making, or had formed a child poverty policy developmentgroup.

Figure 3Approaches to tackling child poverty in Scottish CPPs, 2011–2012

Established a child poverty development

group

Used Child Poverty Impact Assessments

when developing local policy

Produced a local action plan

Speci�ied a Local Outcome in the SOA

Collected local evidence of child poverty

Source: Authors’ own survey data (McKendrick and Sinclair, 2012b).


468

It would appear that the first year of the CPSS did not prompt either aproliferation nor acceleration of innovative interventions by CPPs to tacklechild poverty locally.

Among the main barriers to tacking child poverty reported by local officerswere general economic conditions (identified by 71% of respondents); a lackof money (50%); the anticipated effect of UK government policies (50%); andthe lack of any statutory obligation for local action to address child poverty(32%). This final figure is particularly interesting, as it suggests that almostone third of local officials responsible for child poverty feel that they wouldbe more effective if tackling child poverty was a compelling duty ratherthan a matter of local discretion. Nevertheless, almost three quarters oflocal officers reported that tackling child poverty was a local policy priorityand approximately two thirds considered that it was a priority for servicedevelopment and delivery. It is also significant that only 8% of local officialsbelieved that there was a lack of local political commitment to tacklingchild poverty. Finally, in contrast to the anticipated damage of UK governmentpolicies, only 8% of local officials regarded the policies of the ScottishGovernment as a barrier to reducing child poverty in their area, although thiscould reflect the respective significance of UK and Scottish governmentpowers in this matter rather than the substance of policy.The Scottish Parliament Local Government and Communities Committee

(2009) recommended that ‘there should be a local outcome on tacklingchild poverty in each annual single outcome agreement’. Given the evidenceof child poverty in every local authority area in Scotland (Table 2), this is areasonable recommendation. Local authorities have a statutory communityleadership responsibility, and should exercise this to address child poverty intheir areas. There is considerable experience among Community PlanningPartnerships in Scotland in identifying shared local priorities and developingOutcome Agreements to address these; however, there is certainly scope toimprove the application of this experience to a systematic strategy to addresslocal child poverty.

Principles, Priorities and Practical Measures for Local Actionto Tackle Child Poverty in Scotland

Caution is required before making recommendations about local child povertypolicy. In particular, not all of what has been claimed as ‘best practice’ andevidence of ‘success’ presented in the literature in this field has beenindependently verified; in some cases, such evidence would be best described


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as ‘what has been tried’ rather than ‘what has been proven to work’. Despitethis, there are a number of evident qualities of effective local measures toreduce poverty from the extensive accumulative experience in this area(C4EO, 2009).It is clear that no single factor nor measure which is introduced will

eradicate child poverty or ameliorate its effects. While this might seem anobvious point to make, its implications are significant. A relevant generalobservation is that ‘outcomes are so inter-related and reinforcing atcommunity level, that improving one outcome in isolation from others isunlikely to be successful’ (Mair et al., 2011: 17). Similarly, interventions whichare narrowly targeted on particular aspects of child poverty are unsuccessful ifthey fail to take into account factors such as wider family circumstances(Marangozov and Stevens, 2011). Recognising this, the European Union hasrecommended that the most effective response to child poverty is a multi-dimensional approach based on three pillars: access to adequate resources;access to quality services and opportunities, and ensuring that children’sviews and experiences are taken into account in developing policies that affectthem (EU Presidency, 2010).One potential benefit of the UK government’s interest in extending

the definition of child poverty beyond income is that could stimulate theadoption of a wider range of local policy options that are currently availableto address this problem. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (Brewer et al., 2011)has argued that a focus on income-based definitions of poverty may skewpolicy responses towards reforms of tax credits and benefits (i.e. nationalinterventions) rather than other measures which can improve children’squality of life (i.e. local interventions, or interventions that are implementedlocally). Furthermore, a focus on directly raising household incomes may berelatively less important for local child poverty strategies which are moresuited to mitigating the effects of child poverty and deprivation throughproviding services such as free school meals, access to leisure, educationalsupport through schools and social protection. A significant implication of theEU Presidency recommendation on child poverty is that it reminds policymakers that children and young people have lives beyond their families wheresupport can be provided by local agents. One interesting illustration of thesewider factors is the Child Poverty Pyramid (Figure 4) originally developed bythe UK Government’s Child Poverty Unit (see Bracknell Forest Partnership,2011). This consists of 15 inter-related factors, comprising of three tiers. Thehighest tier includes factors that directly and immediately influence householdresources and income (i.e. financial support, earnings, expenditure). Thesecond tier includes factors that directly influence households’ ability to enter


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471

sustained employment in the short and longer term (education and skills,access to childcare, transport and the availability of employment). The bottomtier consists of factors that indirectly influence a household’s ability toenter and sustain well paid employment over the longer term, i.e. children’searly development; financial inclusion; access to services and facilities; health;teenage pregnancy; relationship breakdown; crime, drug and alcohol abuse.These factors are not proposed as a definitive model of the determinants of

children’s well-being or deprivation, but they do provide an illustration of therange of issues which local agents should consider when developing local childpoverty strategies. Local authorities and CPPs have the capacity to addresssome of the wider, less direct dimensions of child poverty and deprivationthrough the services and the ‘social wage’ role that they provide. For example,among the factors in the child poverty pyramid which CPPs can influencedirectly or indirectly are accessible or subsidised sporting or cultural activities;free school meals; those local environmental improvements which directlyimpact on children (such as the provision of accessible, quality public space);improved local transport; reducing fuel poverty; promoting financial inclusion;increasing the availability of childcare that at the same time enriches children’slives (rather than that which is only concerned to facilitate parents’participation in the labour market); providing social services support for at-risk children, and improving access to advice on financial issues and benefits(Local Government Association, 2003: 7). In all of these areas CPPs and otherlocal agents acting independently can increase households’ disposable income(by reducing necessary spend) and reduce child deprivation in importantrespects, and could be considered as part of a child poverty strategy. There isalso an opportunity for local agents to tackle aspects of child poverty at thelocal levels that are not prioritised or sufficiently acknowledged in nationalstrategies. To do so, they should focus on the potential sources of influencewhich their existing powers confer, which is to say, helping householdsindirectly through providing services rather than increasing householdincomes directly.In order to address these issues in a time of expenditure reductions

local agents must recognise two strategic imperatives: firstly, raising averagestandards will not necessarily benefit the poorest households; secondly, it isnecessary to re-examine who benefits from and who pays for local services.Analyses of the distribution of deprivation and poverty within Scotland revealsthat the most severe and intense deprivations exist not at the level of localauthorities nor cities but within neighbourhoods, or parts thereof (Table 2).There is more inequality within Scottish local authorities than between them,and sophisticated targeting of services and support is required to address


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these very localised concentrations of deprivation (Mair et al., 2011). A rise inaverage incomes or service quality will not necessarily help households at thevery bottom, in fact the opposite may the case, as such improvements oftenbenefit those already better off. It is an arithmetic truism that to reducerelative poverty it is necessary to increase the incomes of those at the bottomat a faster rate than the median incomes (Stewart, 2012: 11), and this principleapplies to other relative disadvantages. For example, by the age of fivechildren from the poorest quintile of UK households are already on averagealmost one year behind their expected level of development (ESRC, nd).General improvements in education will not reduce this gap; rather, it requiresadditional intensive support beyond that provided to children who are notheld back by material disadvantages. Similarly, there is no reason to supposethat any general improvement in either national or regional employmentprospects will benefit those in greatest need unless they are provided with theemployment skills training and other support they require to overcome theircompetitive disadvantages and the barriers to employment that confrontthem. In short, reducing poverty requires action to reverse the ‘inverse carelaw’ which exists not only in medicine but in several public and welfareservices (Matthews and Hastings, 2013).

One potential disadvantage of this approach from the point of view ofCPPs and national governments is that improving the incomes of those atthe very bottom does not necessarily lead to a fall in the recorded levelof poverty, unless the rise is so great that such households are moved abovethe 60% median income threshold. Nevertheless, while such improvementsmight not be apparent in the current headline poverty measures, theirpotential impacts are important for those who experience them (DWP, 2011).Indeed, if child poverty was conceived more broadly, then it would be easierto monitor and evidence the positive impact of such interventions on childpoverty goals.This relates to the second strategic imperative of tackling child poverty at

the local level in Scotland: the need to examine carefully the distributionalimpact of service provision and reductions. The Scottish Government’sCohesion golden rule committed it to ‘narrow the gap in participationbetween Scotland’s best and worst performing regions by 2017’. This hasbeen interpreted as referring to regional differences, and in particular toinequalities between urban and rural areas, but the geography of deprivationin Scotland is more marked at the very local level rather than betweenlarger areal units, and to eliminate inequalities between local communities,as recommended by the National Group on Community Planning (2012),additional resources must be directed towards the most deprived


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communities and neighbourhoods. As the Scottish Government, CoSLA andNHS Early Years Taskforce observed in a different context, ‘(d)ifficult decisionswill need to be made, at a national and local level, about where investmentshould be prioritised’ (2012: 3). In the current context of unprecedentedretrenchment, this means considering the effects of imposing cuts. Lowincome households rely more heavily on public services than other groups(Scottish Government, 2012: 3) and therefore any universal reductions in suchprovision affects them disproportionately and are regressive (Allan et al.,2011; Milne, 2012).There are obvious political risks involved in reallocating resources in a

context of austerity; but if the Scottish Government and CPPs are seriousabout reducing child poverty they must show the political courage andleadership which potentially unpopular measures entail (Parekh et al., 2010).This would include considering, for example, whether it is appropriate toprovide free public transport to those aged 60 or over in Scotland irrespectiveof their income and need when younger unemployed people aged older than18 might have a greater need for such support to access job opportunities(Kenway, 2010). However, while there is a case for reconsidering who needsstate support and who benefits most from current provision, the languageused by those in favour of eliminating a ‘something for nothing’ system isdivisive and risks portraying this debate as a conflict between contributors andrecipients, when in fact most citizens are both at different times in their lives(Bennett, 2003; McKendrick, 2011).In relation to examining the distributional impact of service provision and

reductions, Scottish CPPs could make greater efforts to child poverty-prooftheir policies and strategic plans (Nelson et al., 2011). The Scottish ParliamentLocal Government and Communities Committee (2009) recommended ‘thatpolicies should be poverty-proofed so that their impact on poverty and onchild poverty can be assessed during policy development’, and althoughimpact assessments are sometimes dismissed as mere ‘tick-box’ exercises,they can encourage more long term thinking about the outcomes of spendingdecisions (Milne, 2012). An important example of this is CPP support forchildcare provision. Access to affordable, flexible childcare is important inenabling parental employment (Mason et al., 2010), but unless provision isconsidered carefully it might not benefit the lowest income households.There is evidence that childcare in the UK is used more by higher incomehouseholds (Bradshaw, 2012), while lower income families make greateruse of playgroups, and those in the most deprived areas favourcreches, sitter services and family centres. In fact, analysis by the ScottishGovernment (2010b) concluded that ‘access to childcare is not a particular


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problem in poor areas’. This is not a case for reducing childcare provision butfor developing more imaginative forms of care suitable for households indeprived areas, while recognizing how challenging this might be (McQuaid etal., 2007) – and this requires a local focus to determine the most appropriateservice delivery to attend to particular local needs.

Devising reliable and affordable childcare suited to the lowest incomehouseholds is only likely to be possible if those who need such a service areinvolved in its development. It is essential to know why some householdswhich need or would benefit from services do not use them, and this is whySir Harry Burns argued at the first meeting of the National Group onCommunity Planning (2012) that there was compelling and critical need forcommunity engagement in CPP policy making. The participation of those whoare intended to benefit from services is not merely a principle of democracybut of effective practice (Griggs and Bennett, 2009; Ben Galim, 2011).

Supporting Employment

The issue of work and employability merits particular attention.Notwithstanding the Scottish Government’s acknowledgement of the arrayof factors that contribute toward impoverished lives for Scotland’s mostdisadvantaged children, there has been a tendency for national government topromote a ‘work-first’ approach to tackling child poverty. It is also a focus oflocal action; the analysis of SOAs in 2009 found that supporting employmentand providing assistance to help people into employment was a strategicpriority in all but one CPP (Telfer et al., 2009). It is also significant that thename and focus of the key Learning Network in Scotland for local practitionersshifted from ‘community regeneration and tackling poverty’ to ‘employabilityand tackling poverty’ in 2011.

Headline statistics on the relative risk of poverty between different typesof household would seem to vindicate the ‘work-first’ approach to tacklingchild poverty pursued by successive UK governments: 40% of children fromworkless families in the UK live in poverty compared to only 13% of thosefrom families with at least one working adult (DWP, 2013). It is estimated thatincreases in household employment contributed two percentage points to thefall in the UK level of child poverty recorded between 1997/98–2008/09, andincreased employment among lone parents was a significant element of this(Garnham, 2012). The increase in parental employment was particularlyimportant factor in reducing child poverty in Scotland and northern areas ofEngland (Brewer et al., 2010; Barham, 2011).


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International evidence shows that child poverty is lowest in those countrieswith high levels of maternal employment enabled by high-quality affordablechildcare (Rowlingson and Millar, 2002). However, focusing on increasingparental employment is at best only partly justified: 66% all children inpoverty in the UK live in families where at least one member is employed(DWP, 2013, Table 4.3db; Aldridge et al., 2012). From this perspective it couldbe argued that (poorly paid) employment is as much a ‘cause’ of poverty asunemployment (Veit-Wilson, 2005: 684), and certainly the evidence ofwidespread in-work poverty should raise questions about the limitations ofthe work-first approach to tackling child poverty which has characterised UKgovernment policy. Simply moving people from benefits into low paidemployment will not reduce child poverty (Steiger, 2004), and can in fact leadto increased parental stress and child neglect (McKendrick et al., 2003)The attention devoted to increasing the ostensible provision of childcare

without considering its suitability for the lowest income households suggeststhat the UK governments have been more interested in increasing employmentper se than in reducing poverty and deprivation. What improves households’situations is not employment in itself but the combination of the mode ofemployment and household composition. For example, 17% of children fromlone parent families in which the parent works part-time are in povertycompared to only 8% of children in lone parent households where the parentworks full-time (DWP, 2013, Table 4.5db); similarly, in families with two adults,39% of children in families in which one or both work part-time are in povertycompared to only 20% of children in households where one adult works full-time and the other does not work, 6% of children in families in which oneworks full-time and the other part-time and 4% of families in which bothparents work full-time (DWP, 2013, Table 4.5db). The persistence of poverty inemployment is due to low hours of work as well as low pay. While the lattermay be improved by introducing and encouraging a living wage, the formerrequires measures to reduce the barriers to employment and to improve thequality of jobs available to households with children, in terms of theirsustainability and the opportunities they offer for progressing and improvingskills, so that parents’ can improve their longer term capabilities rather thanremain trapped in a low pay/no pay cycle (Shildrick et al., 2010).

Child Poverty in Challenging Times

Recent forecasts about future trends in child poverty are discouraging aboutthe likelihood of meeting the target to eradicate it in either the UK or Scotland


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by 2020. The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicted that child poverty in the UKwould remain relatively unchanged up to 2012–13, before rising slightly in2013–14 (Brewer et al., 2011); the living standards of low-income families arealso expected to fall in the years to 2020, so that both child and working-ageadult poverty are forecast to rise when measured in absolute terms.

These dispiriting predictions are partly attributable to general economicconditions somewhat beyond the control of any national government.However, there are two other factors contributing to this anticipatedoutcome which are directly attributable to the policy choices of the UKgovernment. The first of these is its commitment to prioritise reducingthe budget deficit over every other fiscal consideration and to do so principallyby reducing public spending (amounting for approximately 80% of theproposed measures) rather than increasing taxes (accounting for 20%). The UKgovernment initially aimed to reduce expenditure by £81 billion by 2014/15(DWP and DfE, 2012). This is an unprecedented retrenchment: ‘the plannedreal cut of 16.2 per cent in public service spending between April 2010 andMarch 2017 is nearly twice as big as the previous biggest seven year fall(between 1975 and 1982) seen in the UK since the second world war. Andseven consecutive years of cuts is wholly unprecedented’ (Johnson, 2012: 23).If such reductions were implemented in full then UK public spending wouldfall below 40% of GDP, proportionately lower than the USA (Taylor-Gooby,2012). Reducing child poverty is particularly challenging when it is estimatedthat public spending will not return to 2010 levels for another 15–20 years(National Group on Community Planning, 2012), and that local authorities andother public organisations face budget cuts of 2.5–3% per year over themedium term (Improvement Service, 2011: 28).The second factor creating challenging conditions for efforts to reduce

child poverty is a direct outcome of the UK government’s expenditure policies:the welfare reform measures introduced to implement these cutbacks. It isnot possible to discuss all of these reforms in detail, but it is importantto note some of the principal measures and their anticipated effects. Themost significant changes introduced by the 2012 Welfare Reform Act and asuccession of spending reviews since 2010 include: (i) ending universalChild Benefit (CB) by withdrawing it from households containing a higherrate taxpayer by 2014/15 and freezing CB for three years from April 2011;(ii) capping Housing Benefit at £500 per week for couple and lone-parenthouseholds, and £350 per week for single-person households; (iii) reducingthe percentage of childcare costs that can be claimed through Working TaxCredit (WTC) from 80% to 70% and increasing the number of hours that couplemust work to qualify for WTC to 24 rather than 16 hours a week between


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them; and (iv) increasing benefits for working age households in line with theConsumer Price Index rather than the higher Retail Price Index, or a mere 1%per year, as announced in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement in December2012, which amounts to a cut in real terms.The initial cuts and reforms amounted to reduction in welfare

expenditure of £18 billion. This was followed by an announcement fromthe Chancellor George Osborne at the 2012 Conservative Party conferenceof plans for a further £10 billion reduction in welfare expenditure. The netresult of these measures is that low income households with children,whether employed or not, face multiple pressures on their incomes (e.g.through rising childcare, fuel and transport costs) while the level of supportthey receive is declining in both relative and in some cases, absolute terms.This will lead to a very significant and damaging increase in the number offamilies facing material deprivation, such that the reduction of 450,000 in thenumber of children in poverty which Universal Credit is predicted to achieve,will be more than offset by the increase in poverty resulting from thegovernment’s other changes to tax credits and state benefits (Brewer et al.,2011: 3).The Scottish Government has argued that ‘UK Government measures are

conflicting with their stated aims to reduce poverty and meet the targets inthe Child Poverty Act 2010’ (2012b: 4). This is a legitimate conclusion, and it isevident that it is more difficult to reduce child poverty in the current economicand political climate than at any time since 1999. This has heralded theunprecedented step of the Scottish Parliament refusing consent to certainaspects of the UK Welfare Reform Bill in 2011 and passing instead its ownWelfare Reform (further provision) (Scotland) Act in August 2012, withsupport from all the main parties in Scotland. This Act preserved access tocertain social security benefits for those affected by the introduction ofUniversal Credit. Subsequently, the Scottish Government established a WelfareReform Scrutiny Group to assess the impact of UK government reforms andcreated a £9.2 million Scottish Welfare Fund in response to the abolition fromApril 2013 of the discretionary Social Fund Community Care Grants and CrisisLoans and has published reports which estimate the impact of these reformson people in Scotland (Scottish Government, 2013c). As with so much ofsocial and child poverty policy in Scotland, this new Fund is described by theScottish government as a joint venture with CoSLA and Community PlanningPartnerships, and this reflects the fact that the local dimension of childpoverty policy is now more important than ever before.Welcome as these practical steps are to protect the most vulnerable

children (and some adults) from the worst excesses the poverty that would


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result from Welfare Reform, it does nevertheless dilute the focus ongovernment in Scotland (local and Scottish national) away from otherinterventions that would aim to reduce child poverty and it provides aninconvenient discord that allows Scottish and UK governments to attributeresponsibility for failing policies to the other. In a similar vein, Scottish localgovernment can point to the restrictions on increasing local taxation, placedupon it by the Scottish Government, to account for more limited action totackle child poverty than might otherwise be possible.

Conclusion: Can Scottish Local Authorities ReduceChild Poverty?

Scottish Community Planning Partnerships do not have any legal obligationto reduce child poverty, but as a result of the 2010 Child Poverty Act andthe relationships which they have developed since forming a Concordatwith the Scottish Government in 2007, they undoubtedly have significantresponsibilities in this area. However, these responsibilities have increased ata time when effective action is made more difficult by some of the recentactions of the UK government and by the ‘freezing’ of local taxation instigatedby the Scottish Government. The Scottish Parliament Welfare ReformCommittee (2012: para 4) is justified in expressing its ‘grave concerns aboutaspects of the UK Welfare Reform Act’, and recent indications that the UKgovernment favour a definition of child poverty which emphasises supposedbehavioural factors is a further cause for concern.It is important for local agents to be realistic about what they can

accomplish in these circumstances. Patience and persistence are required; ithas been estimated that at least two years is required to develop effectiveshared local child poverty strategies (C4EO, 2009: 3). It is also important torecognise that in several areas of child poverty local agents cannot themselvesactually deliver outcomes, as these depend upon local conditions and theresponses of households to the services and opportunities offered to them.However, CPPs can create or improve the conditions which enable or increasethe likelihood that outcomes will be realised, although to do so requires thatthey direct their activities appropriately. Local interventions have limitedcapacity to directly increase the incomes of the poorest households, but theycan mitigate the effects of poverty by reducing the expenditure of low incomehouseholds, providing services which address their particular needs, andcontributing to the development of their capabilities through engaging themin decision making and supporting employment (Nelson et al., 2011).


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It is evident that CPPs in Scotland have embraced the child poverty agendabut it also appears that the practical actions required to achieve this ambitionlag behind this commitment. While the capacity of both the ScottishGovernment and Community Planning Partnerships to reduce child povertyare inhibited by current economic and political conditions this makes theirefforts to do so more important than ever.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Claire Telfer, Policy and AdvocacyManager at Save the Children (Scotland) for her support during theresearch project which informs this article, and the local authority ChiefExecutives, elected members and policy officers who responded to thesurvey. We are also grateful to Colin Mair for his helpful comments onthe survey questionnaire and to the two referees of an earlier version ofthis paper. The interpretation of the findings from this survey and of thepolicies of the Scottish Government and Community Planning Partnershipsoffered here is entirely that of the authors.

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Tackling Child Poverty Locally: Principles, Priorities and Practicalities in Challenging Times

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