Category

• Emerging Local Practice

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Poverty impact

• Mitigation

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Poverty driver

• Non-driver - improving quality of life

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Keywords

• Lived Experience
• Stigma
• Training to understand poverty
• Community engagement
• Communication

Aim

The aim of the project is to collect qualitative data from families with lived experience of poverty and use these insights to devise strategies to help alleviate their struggles.

Summary

The project was led by Midlothian Sure Start in partnership with Midlothian Council. It was one of nine successful applicants to the Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund–which was set up to explore promising approaches or redesign services to maximise their impact on child poverty. The project supported low-income families to take part in community action and advise on improvements in local services. This provided local families the opportunity to get involved in and influence local service provision. It aimed to identify improvements, ensuring help was on offer and was joined-up and people were supported in a dignified way which mitigated stigma.

What difference does it make?

By November 2024, there was no substantial policy change but over 60 interviews were undertaken and the work to analyse these is underway. Furthermore, the project has enabled the experiences of families with lived experience to be validated and shared. The importance of the issue around the perceived ‘culture of poverty’ and the importance of shame and stigma and how this limits families’ inclination to access support has become apparent.

Key take-aways

• It was found that language choice was an important factor in gaining project participation. It was noted that using the word ‘poverty’ led people to quickly become uninterested .
• There was found to be an associated stereotyping associated with the use of such words as 'Poverty'.
• Using alternative phrases such as ‘cost-of-living crisis’ seemed to be less demoralising to the families and facilitated better engagement.

 

Organisations

Midlothian Sure Start and Midlothian Council were lead partners with support from Edinburgh University and Edinburgh Napier University.

Location

Midlothian.

Contact