Understanding the experiences of receiving the Five Family Payments

About the study

The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 placed a statutory duty on the Scottish Government to achieve a series of child-poverty reduction targets by 2030. The passing of the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 gave the Scottish Government powers to deliver social security benefits and resulted in the creation of a series of new benefits. These included the Five Family Payments (FFP), which provide support to families living on low incomes and play an important role in the government’s child-poverty reduction ambitions.

The Evaluation of the Five Family Payments (FFP) was commissioned by the Scottish Government. The primary aim was to assess the short to medium term impacts of FFP (Scottish Child Payment, Best Start Foods and the three Best Start Grant payments) both individually and collectively, on families and children receiving one or more of the payments. This included the extent to which FFP have improved financial outcomes for families, reduced material deprivation experienced by families, improved health and wellbeing outcomes for children and families, and helped reduce barriers to education and the labour market.

The research also aimed to explore the awareness, take-up and impact of the FFP among seldom heard groups, particularly priority groups of low-income families at increased risk of being marginalised from the social security system.

Findings

Overall, both individually and collectively, FFP are having a positive impact on families and children.

• FFP are helping to reduce material deprivation by increasing child-related spending. This included providing essential items such as clothing, toys and nursery and school-related costs during key stages of a child's development. FFP also enabled some families to afford social and educational activities, as well as occasional treats.
• FFP have improved the financial circumstances of low-income families, enabling them to cover essential child and household expenses and manage unexpected costs. While some families still faced financial pressure and made sacrifices to overcome financial restrictions, FFP have reduced the need for food banks and borrowing money.
• For most families, FFP have not influenced their work and education decisions, although some parents and carers reported FFP helped to overcome barriers to work and education by covering related costs. It has also enabled some families to reduce working hours to meet caregiving needs.
• FFP have positively impacted the mental and physical health and wellbeing of parents, carers, and their children. The reduction in money-related stress and anxiety improved the mental health and happiness of parents and carers. Being able to provide for their children and afford treats enhanced their relationships with their children and made them feel better as parents or carers.

Conclusions

There is clear evidence from this study that both individually and collectively, FFP are meeting their short-term outcomes and good progress is being made towards achieving a number of the medium-term outcomes. While it is a positive picture for the majority of families, the perceived impact of FFP on families does vary.

This study has found some variation in the impact of FFP on different priority groups. For example, large families with three or more children and households with a disabled family member(s) were more likely to report that SCP helped pay for household essentials (compared with households with one or two children or without a disabled family member). Interviews with parents, carers and those who support low-income families provided some context to these findings. There are families facing greater overall costs due to the size of their family. Others have limitations on their income as a result of being the sole carer or because they cannot work, or can only work limited hours because they care for a disabled family member(s).

However, it is important to note that many priority families share one or more of the priority characteristics and the analysis undertaken for this study does not control for these interconnected characteristics. This makes it difficult to determine which individual factor, if any, is driving the relationship with particular outcomes.

Methodology

The research consisted of an online survey with an achieved sample of 3,922 parents and carers who had received at least one of the FFP benefits, combined with follow-up depth interviews with 33 clients and interviews with five stakeholders who work with low-income families eligible for FFP. The survey fieldwork ran from 9th October to 8th November 2024. The qualitative fieldwork ran from 28th October 2024 to 27th January 2025.