The 'go to' organisation for Local Government improvement in Scotland

What is the Child Poverty Self-Assessment?

The Child Poverty Self-Assessment is a tool designed to help local authorities, territorial health boards, and community planning partners evaluate their current work in addressing child poverty locally. It encourages reflection on progress, challenges, and areas for improvement.

By going through the process of self-assessment, local partners can better understand their strengths and identify opportunities for improvement in tackling child poverty, contributing to Scotland's national goal of reducing child poverty by 2030.

The self-assessment can be used by anyone involved in tackling child poverty at a local level, including local authorities, health boards, and community planning partners (CPPs). Often it will be the council or CPP subgroup charged with developing the annual Local Child Poverty Action Report that initiates the process of self-assessment, though that isn’t always the case.

The self-assessment tool is an online survey containing four sections, as detailed below. Respondents are asked to consider these statements in the context of their own area and then rate the extent to which they agree/disagree with each statement.

The survey is divided into four sections:

• Understanding Need: This introduces questions around how well data and intelligence are being used to understand and address child poverty. It challenges respondents to consider the extent to which the voice of lived experience is meaningfully reflected.
• Policy Levers and Resource: This section probes whether policy levers and resources are being used in a coordinated way to take an effective, dignified and preventative approach to child poverty.
• Understanding our Impact: These questions prompt respondents to consider whether the impact of policy decisions and service delivery is well understood. They also ask local areas to consider whether they know what is working and what isn’t.
• Ways of Working: This question asks respondents to consider whether local governance structures and methods of service delivery effectively support work to tackle child poverty. It also prompts respondent to consider how child poverty fits with wider related policy agendas such as Whole Family Wellbeing, the Promise, UNCRC, No One Left Behind and closing the attainment gap.

Each section contains statements for respondents to evaluate based on their local area knowledge. At the end of each section, respondents can provide examples of strengths and suggest areas for improvement.

Both the content and the process for completing the self-assessment are flexible and can be tailored to meet local needs.

The process is generally as follows:

1. The self-assessment process is 'launched' and circulated to relevant local partners.
   Local partners complete the online survey. This can be done anonymously if preferred.
2. The survey responses are analysed by the Improvement Service and fed back via a presentation or report.
3. Local partners discuss the results collectively and identify future priorities and improvement actions.

Different levels of support

There are varying levels of support available to help with the self-assessment process.

Self-Guided: You can complete the self-assessment independently using the available online resources. A designated person will receive the survey responses at the local level.

Guided Support: You can receive assistance with the process, including help with understanding and completing the assessment and processing and analysing the responses.

Implementation Support: If needed, the national partners can support implementing some of the improvements identified during the self-assessment. This offer will be dependent on the level of local need and the capacity of national partners to provide improvement support. An evaluation carried out by the Scottish Poverty and Inequality Research Unit (SPIRU) suggests that self-assessment, in tandem with the implementation support process, is an effective means of driving transformative change locally.

Starting the process is a valuable step regardless of the level of support you need. Contact the National Coordinator if you're interested in carrying out a self-assessment or would like more information on how to get started.

National Partner Expertise

The kind of support available or provided to local areas will vary according to the needs of each local area but might include support from:

• CPAG offers expertise on reducing the cost of the school day and has extensive expertise on the social security system in Scotland.
• PHS offers a range of tools including a child poverty resource which supports local areas to develop child poverty strategic plans within complex systems. It also aims to help to make the best use of data and evidence when planning, monitoring and evaluating local action on child poverty.
• The Improvement Service contributes through research, data analysis, and the facilitation of sharing best practice across local authorities. The IS also provides support with facilitation and review of governance arrangements.
• The Scottish Government provides guidance and analysis and can connect local areas with relevant government departments teams.
• The Poverty Alliance supports local authorities with meaningful community engagement and incorporating the lived experiences of those in poverty into policy and practice. They also provide support around embedding living wage and hours locally.
• SPIRU provides local authorities with access to the Tackling Poverty Locally Directory alongside social research expertise and insights to help address child poverty.

Case study: Child poverty self-assessment process in East Lothian

East Lothian Partnership initiated a child poverty self-assessment process to identify good practice, opportunities, challenges, and potential for innovation in their collective approach to tackling child poverty. Read the case study here.