Shetland's Local Annual Child Poverty Report 2024/25 Now Published

You can view the report here.

The Local Annual Child Poverty Action report, produced by Shetland Islands Council and NHS Shetland looks at what is known about child poverty in Shetland; and highlights what has been done within the year to support children, young people and their families who live in poverty.

In Shetland, the levels of children living in low income families is still higher than pre-pandemic levels (despite a small decrease on the previous year) and cost of living remains high. We also know that stigma and pride are significant barriers to families accessing support. This has informed our priorities, which are:

• Normalising family support, and ensuring child and family centred approaches, across all of our supports; and
• Increasing the income of our families.

The first part of the report focuses on known and recently collected data. This includes a break down of Shetland’s poverty and cost of living data and the 2024/25 locality profiles’ data.

The report goes on to explore the activity of partners and communities and the impact their work has had during 2024/25. This activity includes opportunities and integrated support that parents need to enter, sustain and progress in work. It also maximises the support available for families to enable them to live dignified lives by helping to meet basic needs. This year's report also focused on professional development and culture that can support these things to happen. The aim is that the long term impact from this activity will support the next generation to thrive.

The planning and delivery of actions to address structural changes required to reduce child poverty are set out in the Delivery Plan for Shetland’s Partnership Plan 2023-2027. The alignment of plans with services working collaboratively will ensure that reducing child poverty in Shetland is a key collective theme for partners.