Renfrewshire Council

What the Local Child Poverty Action Report is

This is Renfrewshire Council's 6th Local Child Poverty Action Report.

It captures the range of activity that's taken place in Renfrewshire to reduce child poverty between April 2023 and March 2024. It also sets out our actions for 2024 to 2025 and beyond.

This year, the cost-of-living crisis has continued to have a significant impact on Renfrewshire families.

Although no longer referred to as a crisis, the cost-of-living remains much higher than in previous years which means that many families are struggling financially. We recognise the impact of this is much greater for low-income households.

Our report describes the actions Renfrewshire Council and our partners, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC), and Renfrewshire Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) have taken to help our families deal with the financial challenges facing them. We continue to work across Renfrewshire with Community Planning partners and the third sector to support our families living with the financial pressures on their households.

This includes immediate supports, short-term actions that sit alongside our existing initiatives and longer-term plans which support families out of poverty.

Themes of the Local Child Poverty Action Report

The report focuses on 3 themes:

• providing the opportunities and integrated support parents need to enter, sustain and progress in work
• maximising the support available for families to live dignified lives and meet their basic needs
• supporting the next generation to thrive.

Priority actions

We developed a set of priority actions for 2023 to 2024, with more details on some of the specific actions below. For more information, read the full Local Child Poverty Action Report [988KB] .

1. Develop Fairer Renfrewshire Programme

2. Carry out a 'deep dive' into local child poverty data, to inform future work
3. Develop and support Fairer Renfrewshire Lived Experience Panel to deliberate on and guide policy and practice
4. Expand opportunities for parents to enter, sustain and progress at work through the Parental Employability Support Fund
5. Pilot models of dedicated advice provision for families with children
6. Monitor the ongoing impacts of the cost-of-living crisis, continuing to flexibly respond to emerging issues
7. Join up support for families within communities and across partners.

Fairer Renfrewshire Programme

Our Fairer Renfrewshire programme continues to have a positive impact on low-income families in Renfrewshire in 2023 and 2024

In March 2023, £818,000 was allocated to the programme to continue a number of existing supports, such as free school breakfasts in schools in areas with high levels of child poverty and funding for our mobile children's library, the Skoobmobile.

The program also supports new initiatives, including support for community food programs that prioritise dignified access to food and community resilience.

Developing the Fairer Renfrewshire Panel

Our Fairer Renfrewshire Panel of people with lived experience of poverty has been running for over a year, and in that time the Panel has influenced policies and practices in areas such as the summer holiday programme and school meal debt.

The Panel also met with our employability service, Invest, and the feedback they provided has been used to make a number of changes to their service, and how they communicate with the public.

Expanding advice for families

Advice for families has extended in the last year. We now have advice in all secondary

and ASN schools through a pilot with Renfrewshire Citizens Advice Bureau (RCAB), while our own Advice Works service provides advice to all families with younger children.

Our Advice Works service also piloted an initiative where all families applying for free school meals or clothing grants were offered advice.

Both Advice Works and RCAB are involved in our new school meal debt processes, which focuses on support for families. Schools will send referrals to both Advice Works and RCAB for families who may be struggling with money.

Looking forward to 2024 to 2025

Collaborating across services and with partners is vital to provide the most comprehensive supports for families living with low incomes.

In 2024 to 2025, we will continue to join up support and bring our partners together, to focus on achieving the most for our communities and families.

Through our Fairer Renfrewshire Sub-Committee, and using our Fairer Renfrewshire Officers Group and wider statutory and 3rd sector links, we will work across services to help families cope with rising costs-of-living and child poverty and maximise the impact of services.

Using improved data about our communities, we will better identify the resources required and target services where they are needed most. This will be done while continuing to respond to emerging issues affecting families across the whole of Renfrewshire.

How to read the Local Child Poverty Action Report

Read the full Local Child Poverty Action Report [988KB] to learn more about what outcomes we achieved last year, other information about child poverty and our plans to reduce it in Renfrewshire.