Category

• Fully Validated Effective Local Practice

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Poverty impact

• Mitigation

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Poverty driver

• Increase income from benefits

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Keywords

• Education
• Financial Inclusion
• Income Maximisation
• Families
• Parents

Aim

The aim of the project is to embed Financial Inclusion support into a school setting and to reduce child poverty by targeting the three main drivers of child poverty:
• cost of living.
• maximising entitlement to generate income from social security benefits.
• income from employment.

Summary

The project aims to support families and alleviate poverty by maximising income. It provides one-to-one guidance and support in welfare rights and debt management. The focus is on increasing income through unclaimed benefits like Universal Credit, with referrals to employability and energy advice also provided.

What difference does it make?

Glasgow FISO project is currently (in 2023) engaging with parents in 47 schools in Glasgow and over 3,000 clients have accessed the service. The projects support has resulted in over £6 million in financial gains to 1,930 families and assisted 361 clients in managing debt of £1,8 million over the three years it has been running (from 2023 report). The FISO officers’ presence at the schools has provided a more consistent form of support to parents, with the appointment of a named proactive contact for each family encouraging engagement with the service. The service has been developed into a more holistic direction through the addition of referral pathways. These have allowed the FISO programme to support families with employability and energy issues.

Key take-aways

• Having a named personal and proactive contact for families is an important strength to a financial support service and to facilitating a flexible delivery that can adapt to the needs of the people accessing the service.
• The need for the support provided by the FISO programme at the schools is identified as long term due to the changes and shifts in the benefits landscape.
• Having schools and partners at the forefront of the delivery of the FISO programme helps facilitate trust in those accessing the service as opposed to advertising it as a council service.

 

Organisations

Glasgow City Council

Location

Glasgow secondary schools and some primary schools.

Early 2020 as a pilot, from March 2021 in its current form.

Contact