Child Poverty in Glasgow
2025
Each year the Centre for Civic Innovation produce a report with the aim to provide those working to alleviate child poverty the insight they need to make decisions and make the best use of their resources for the benefit of those who live in the city.
We have produced a report every year since 2020, Each year it provides a detailed overview of child poverty statistics, drawing primarily from Council Tax Reduction data, as well as focussing on priority groups outlined by the Scottish Government.
With each report, we look at how we can improve our understanding, present data and the perspectives of the people we are working with to go beyond the numbers and gain deeper insight into the complexity and challenges associated with child poverty.
The sixth Child Poverty in Glasgow report brings into focus the lived experiences of families who are struggling to provide the basics for their children—food, warmth, security, and opportunity. These are not just statistics; they are real stories from our communities, and they demand our attention, compassion, and action." Councillor Ricky Bell, Depute Leader & City Treasurer.
What's changed for the 2025 edition?
New data methodology
Each year we try to add a new dimension or way to understand poverty in Glasgow. This year, in addition to the report we’ve produced the Child Poverty Dashboard. It makes the data that we use to measure child poverty in the city publicly available and allows anyone to scrutinise the data we have produced.
Learning from experts on four key themes
In the sixth year of producing this report, we've learned that the challenges associated with poverty are often intertwined and make tackling them more difficult.
This year, we've highlighted employability, language and literacy, disability and the complexity of people’s lives as areas to further explore to better understand and tackle child poverty in Glasgow.
We spoke to service providers and community experts across the city, to learn about the barriers people confront on a daily basis as well as the impact systems can have on people's lives.
A focus on developing holistic and person-centred solutions
Building on the focus on themes that are connected to child poverty, we're detailing some of the work being done to understand the challenges, collaborate with citizens and local organisations to create solutions that can alleviate poverty by fostering collaboration and embedding lived experiences into policy and services.
Scottish Government Targets and Public Service Reform
This year the Scottish Government published Scotland’s Public Service Reform Strategy — Delivering for Scotland. This informs our work and identifies that, “public services are critical to delivering a fairer future and the Government’s priorities of eradicating child poverty, growing the economy and tackling the climate crisis."
The ultimate goal is to inform and support Glasgow's Child Poverty Programme in achieving the Scottish Government's 2030 child poverty targets by fostering collaboration and embedding lived experiences into policy and service design.
The Centre for Civic Innovation are a part of Glasgow’s Child Poverty Programme, a multi-agency team undertaking targeted action to drive systemic change across the city. The team is led by members from across the council family, its ALEOs, academics, and partner organisations. Together, they bring experience in housing, community development, financial advice, policy, health, education, children’s services, employment, and ESOL (English as a second language).
Alongside this core team is the No Wrong Door Network. This is a group of public services, charities, and private organisations working together to make sure families get the help they need without being passed around or turned away.
Child Poverty Dashboard
The Child Poverty Dashboard is a partner tool to the Centre for Civic Innovation's Child Poverty Report. It makes the data that we use to measure child poverty in the city publicly available and allows anyone to scrutinise the data we have produced.
Our aim is to provide Council Officers, and groups with an interest in reducing Child Poverty, with the knowledge to make decisions, design services and drive policy.
Previous editions of the report
We're now on our sixth iteration of the report. In partnership with the Financial Inclusion Team, the CCI wrote the first Child Poverty in Glasgow Report for 2019/2020, Having reported on the level of child poverty in the city since before the pandemic, we have a clear baseline which allows them to compare to pre-pandemic levels of family income and poverty.
A report every year
- Child Poverty in Glasgow 2020
- Child Poverty: Understanding the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic (2021)
- Child Poverty: Recovering from the COVID-19 Pandemic (2022)
- Child Poverty in Glasgow 2023
- Child Poverty in Glasgow 2024
- Child Poverty in Glasgow 2025
"Let this report be a call to action - by listening and working in partnership, we can all make a difference - delivering in the present means hope for the future."
Depute Leader & City Treasurer
