David Hilferty on putting government plans into practice

The first minister has rightly put eradicating child poverty at the centre of his government’s priorities. I recently attended a conference in Glasgow to mobilise behind this national mission. Because it’s going to take all of us, isn’t it?

Whole Family Support is held up as pivotal to this endeavour. Three principles underpin it: emotional and relational support; practical support; and financial support. 

For over 85 years now, those same tenets have been the signature of our own approach at Citizens Advice Scotland. 

One of the unique elements of our advice is its people-centred, wraparound nature. Few problems exist in neat isolation: we see and understand a person’s complete set of circumstances. 

Problems that have been years in the making can only be un-tangled with the building of trust. That takes the time, expertise, respect and compassion that is so central to our approach.

If the Citizens Advice network was the NHS, we would be accident and emergency. 

After more than a decade of austerity and permacrisis, we are the last refuge for people facing unthinkable harm. For people who are out of options after rebounding around broken public services and closed doors. There’s no let up or respite; no straightforward open and shut cases. Increasingly, our advisers are the backstop for failure in every part of the system, from the broken energy market to inadequate social security to the housing emergency.

We help people where they are, and however they need it. 

That’s the context for Whole Family Support. But what does it look like for people in reality?

Let me tell you about a family we’re currently supporting. ‘Scott’ lives in East Lothian and first visited his local CAB in 2019 when he was struggling with debt. Since then, he has visited his CAB 45 times – repeatedly forced into crisis by services and systems that repeatedly fail him and his family. Our support has covered not just debt but energy bills, social security, relationships and more.

That’s just one family. Last year we supported over 190,000 people. 

And yet, despite the difference the CAB network makes, it can feel like we’re up against it. What other sector changes so many lives in so many ways, yet faces a level of insecurity that is uncommon among frontline essential services?

If we’re to continue to play a leading role in eradicating child poverty we need to have the support and resources to do so.

That means secure, multi-year funding. It means moving away from short-term pilots, less focus on reporting of outputs, more on delivery and outcomes.

Those are the prerequisite enabling conditions that must be created to make Whole Family Support a success for any essential frontline service. 

When around one in every ten people we support has needed advice in at least three of the previous years, that’s a sign of entrenched, systemic problems. We can’t solve this in a single year. 

So we are fully behind the first minister’s national mission, and the stated permission to think and act differently.

Because – again – it’s going to take all of us. 

David Hilferty is director of impact at Citizens Advice Scotland.

This column was first published in the Herald.