Scotland’s fight against poverty is at a crossroads. With a renewed focus on addressing child poverty, there’s an opportunity to rethink how public services are structured. Can the country break free from the maze of disconnected policies and offer meaningful support for families in need?
The Limits of Financial Support
As the Scottish Government consults on its next child poverty strategy, there’s much to applaud in its focus on increasing incomes and delivering holistic support for families. But while financial support is critical, it’s not the full answer. After decades of experience working alongside people in poverty, the Wise Group understands that poverty isn’t just about money—it’s about life chances, about breaking down barriers that prevent people from thriving.
Raising incomes is undoubtedly important. But without tackling the deeper structural issues—like poor mental health, housing insecurity, digital exclusion, and low confidence—the system will only manage poverty rather than preventing it. The real question is how to move from simply managing poverty to preventing it.
The Complexities of a Crowded Policy Landscape
Too often, families in poverty face a maze of services that are meant to help but end up overwhelming them. Welfare assessments, housing appointments, health referrals, and employability programs are scattered across disconnected silos, making what should be a safety net feel more like a tangled web.
At a policy level, these efforts seem to make progress. But for the people on the ground, it’s a different story. Multiple interventions, designed in isolation, often create confusion and duplication. This is the “Spartacus problem” of policy-making: each program claims to have the solution, but none of them fully address the root causes of poverty. The result is fragmented, disconnected support that misses the mark.
As Sean Duffy, Chief Executive of the Wise Group, notes, we don’t need to keep redefining poverty. We know what needs to happen—what’s missing is the will to act. It’s time to listen to those who are living in poverty and work with them to create a system that truly addresses their needs.
Tackling Poverty Through Integrated Public Services
What Scotland needs is not just another policy initiative—it needs public sector reform that puts people, not programmes, at the centre. To truly tackle poverty, the Scottish Government must shift from isolated interventions to a system that integrates services around the people who need them most.
Reform must focus on four key areas:
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Integration: Breaking down the silos between education, health, housing, and employability services. Families in poverty don’t face one issue at a time—they face multiple challenges, so our response must be holistic.
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Sustainability: Moving beyond quick fixes to long-term, relationship-based solutions. This requires a focus on building trust and providing ongoing support, not just short-term interventions.
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Impact: Focusing on outcomes rather than outputs. The success of services should be measured by real improvements in people’s lives, not just the number of people helped.
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Invest to Save: Preventing poverty is cheaper than responding to it. By investing in the services that work, we can save money in the long run and, more importantly, create lasting change.
These reforms aren’t just theoretical. They are practical steps that can be taken now to create a system that works for everyone, not just those at the top of the social ladder.
Relational Mentoring: A Model That Works
One of the most promising approaches to addressing child poverty in Scotland is the Relational Mentoring model, which the Wise Group has been using with great success. The model focuses on supporting families across multiple areas of need, from housing to health to employability, through the use of mentors who act as connectors.
Mentors are matched with families based on lived experience, which builds trust quickly and ensures that support is meaningful. The model recognizes that poverty isn’t solved by a single intervention. Instead, mentors work across 15 areas of need, offering continuous support over time. The results speak for themselves: families report significant improvements in their lives, not just in terms of immediate needs being met, but in their long-term prospects.
The key to this model’s success is that it doesn’t replace existing services; it enhances them. Mentors reduce duplication, create cohesion, and ensure that families are connected to the right support at the right time. This is a smart, sustainable way to support families—by focusing on relationships, not just transactions.
Scaling What Works: A Blueprint for Reform
Scotland has a unique opportunity to lead the way in public sector reform. The government should consider scaling up successful models like Relational Mentoring, making it a standard offering for families at the sharpest edge of poverty. This would involve aligning investment with outcomes, not outputs, and rewarding genuine collaboration between services.
Key steps to scaling successful initiatives include:
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Expanding mentoring services: Offering relational mentoring as a standard support service for families facing the greatest challenges.
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Co-locating services: Bringing essential services—such as health, housing, and employability—under one roof to ensure families have easy access to everything they need.
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Commissioning for impact: Using data to track progress and focus investment on services that are truly making a difference in people’s lives.
This holistic approach is crucial for tackling poverty at its roots and ensuring that families don’t just survive but thrive.
