We need action that is joined-up and targeted at at-risk families

It seems now certain that the situation is going to get worse in the next five years.

Taking away the £20 Universal Credit uplift is going to be dire for families. Then, when furlough ends, there’s likely to be huge numbers of job losses. That’s going to be a real cliff-edge drop-off for a lot of people.

What we’re really trying to encourage the Scottish Government to do, not before the end of this parliament but in the next 12 months, is to increase the Scottish child payment.

That needs to be ratcheted up if that can help families get out of poverty and also to meet the Government’s own targets.

It has an interim target by 2023/24 for 18% of children and young people to be in poverty in Scotland. The current statistic is 26%. It has to lose eight percentage points between now and March 2024.

They’re going to miss that by such a wide margin unless they put a lot of resources into it. We need action that’s joined-up and targeted especially to those groups of children who are more likely to experience poverty who are at increased risk, what we call the priority groups.

There are currently many people who are just under the water and keep managing to dip their head above the water occasionally and grab a breath – that’s how I would describe the general experience of poverty.

There are some who are frantically treading water and just keeping their head above the water. And there are some who are floundering quite a way under the surface. They are going to be dragged under and swept away.

The ones that are treading water are also going to go under, and the ones who are just occasionally managing to put their head above water.

It’s going to have a really detrimental impact, not just in the short term but on the longer-term outcomes.

We’re already understanding there are going to be scarring effects on young people’s education and employment from Covid, but when you double that down to the increased levels of poverty and deprivation and the health inequalities, it will have long-term societal economic, as well as social, costs...as well as the very real effects on the young people, children and their families.

“It’s a critical time.”