Poverty and children’s wellbeing are inseparable. Financial hardship can affect whether a child feels safe, stays healthy, participates in activities, achieves at school and feels included alongside their peers.

For professionals working through GIRFEC, this means financial pressure cannot be treated simply as background information.

Understanding a family’s circumstances is essential to understanding the child’s experiences, identifying the right support and avoiding conclusions that place blame on parents or children for difficulties created by poverty.

What does the latest evidence tell us?

The Parenting Evidence Review 2025–26, commissioned by Parenting Across Scotland and produced by The Lines Between, examined 26 reports containing the views and experiences of more than 20,000 parents and carers across at least 31 Scottish local authority areas.

As reported by Children in Scotland, the review identified poverty as a persistent challenge for families.

While social security payments and other interventions provide valuable support, the research found that they do not yet match the scale of the pressures many families face.

Parents and carers also reported stress, anxiety, isolation and pressure to meet societal expectations of parenting. Access to childcare, early years provision and children’s hobbies were among the other significant issues shaping family life.

The evidence included experiences from single parents, carers, minority ethnic families, disabled parents, parents of disabled children, care-experienced parents, foster carers and parents whose children had entered the care system.

This breadth is important. There is no single experience of family poverty, and its effects can be intensified by disability, discrimination, caring responsibilities, insecure work, housing difficulties or limited access to local services.

How are poverty and children’s wellbeing connected?

Financial pressure can influence several areas of a child’s life at the same time.

A child may be unable to attend clubs, school trips or social activities. Their home may be cold or overcrowded. Transport costs may make appointments difficult to attend. A parent may struggle to access suitable childcare or balance caring responsibilities with employment.

These circumstances can affect relationships, routines, physical health, emotional wellbeing and engagement with education.

The impact may not always be immediately identified as poverty.

A child who regularly misses an activity might appear disengaged. A parent who cannot attend a meeting might be described as difficult to reach. A young person without the expected clothing or equipment might be viewed as unprepared.

Without understanding the wider circumstances, professionals risk interpreting the effect of poverty as a problem with the child or family.

Recognising the connection between poverty and children’s wellbeing allows professionals to look beyond the visible concern and consider what may be causing it.

Poverty and children’s wellbeing through the SHANARRI indicators

The SHANARRI indicators provide a useful way to understand the interconnected effects of financial hardship.

• Safe: Insecure or unsuitable housing can affect a child’s sense of safety and stability.
• Healthy: Financial pressure may limit access to nutritious food, heating, transport or opportunities that support physical and mental health.
• Achieving: A lack of technology, study space, transport, clothing or learning materials can create barriers to participation and progress.
• Nurtured: Parental stress does not mean a child is not loved or cared for, but sustained financial pressure can place strain on family wellbeing.
• Active: The cost of clubs, equipment and travel can prevent children from taking part in sport, play and other activities.
• Respected: Children and parents may experience stigma or feel judged because of their financial circumstances.
• Responsible: Some young people take on work, caring duties or financial worries beyond what would normally be expected at their age.
• Included: Poverty can restrict participation in school life, friendships, community activities and important social experiences.

This demonstrates why wellbeing indicators should not be considered in isolation.

Financial hardship can create a chain of connected pressures across several areas of a child’s life. Effective planning needs to recognise those relationships.

Using SHANARRI to explore poverty and children’s wellbeing can help professionals understand the full picture rather than focusing on a single presenting concern.

Understanding circumstances without blaming families

A GIRFEC assessment should seek to understand what is happening around the child, not simply record what appears to be going wrong.

This requires curiosity, sensitivity and non-judgemental conversations with families.

Parents may already feel ashamed, blamed or worried that asking for help will lead professionals to question their ability to care for their children. Families with previous negative experiences of services may be particularly reluctant to discuss money, food or housing.

Professionals should avoid language that presents poverty as a personal failure.

Parents cannot budget their way out of an income that does not meet essential costs. Children cannot overcome structural barriers through resilience alone.

Strengths-based practice remains important, but it should not be used to minimise the material support a family needs.

A sensitive approach to poverty and children’s wellbeing should recognise family strengths while remaining honest about the practical pressures affecting their lives.

What should effective GIRFEC planning include?

Plans should respond to the practical causes of a wellbeing concern as well as its visible effects.

This could include:

• discussing financial pressure sensitively and privately;
• checking whether families are receiving all available entitlements;
• connecting families with welfare rights, money or housing advice;
• considering transport and childcare when arranging appointments;
• identifying costs that prevent a child from participating;
• ensuring support is accessible without unnecessarily complex referral routes;
• coordinating services so families do not repeatedly explain their circumstances; and
• recording wider environmental factors alongside individual needs.

Support should also be designed with families rather than imposed upon them. Parents and children are best placed to explain which pressures are having the greatest impact and what would make the most meaningful difference.

Effective GIRFEC planning should make the relationship between poverty and children’s wellbeing visible. It should show how financial circumstances affect the child, what support has been agreed and whether that support is improving their experiences.

The importance of whole-family support

Poverty rarely affects only one person within a household.

A parent’s mental wellbeing, access to employment, childcare options and caring responsibilities can all influence a child’s experience. Similarly, a child’s disability or additional support needs may affect family income, available working hours and everyday costs.

Whole-family support recognises these relationships.

Rather than directing each issue to a separate service, it aims to provide joined-up, preventative help based on the family’s circumstances. This is closely aligned with GIRFEC’s commitment to providing the right support at the right time.

However, whole-family support must be sufficiently accessible, sustained and properly resourced if it is to reduce pressure rather than add another layer of appointments and processes.

Addressing poverty and children’s wellbeing therefore requires cooperation between education, health, social work, housing, welfare support and third-sector services.

Questions for professionals

When assessing and planning support, organisations should consider:

• Have we explored whether financial pressure is contributing to this concern?
• Are we describing the effect of poverty as a failure by the child or parent?
• Have practical barriers such as transport, childcare and digital access been considered?
• Does the child have equal opportunities to participate in learning and activities?
• Are families being repeatedly referred between disconnected services?
• Have the child and family helped identify what support would make the greatest difference?
• Can our records show how wider circumstances affect multiple wellbeing indicators?

Poverty and children’s wellbeing are matters of rights

Every child has the right to develop, learn, participate and enjoy an adequate standard of living.

When poverty prevents children from accessing those opportunities, it becomes a matter of rights as well as income.

GIRFEC provides a framework through which professionals can recognise the effects of poverty across a child’s life. But identifying those effects must lead to practical, compassionate and coordinated support.

Scotland cannot separate its ambitions for children’s wellbeing from the financial realities facing families.

Getting it right for every child requires services to see those realities clearly, respond without judgement and ensure poverty does not determine which children are able to feel healthy, included and supported to achieve.