Developing the Plan

Our Growing Evidence Base - The Story so Far

In 2004, Shetland’s then Director of Public Health (NHS Shetland) and Environmental Health Manager (Shetland Islands Council), highlighted that Shetland would only be able to effectively tackle health and wider inequalities if everyone had an understanding of what they were, in our remote, rural context.

The data available to us was mainly from national databases and our knowledge was highly reliant on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD).

The Shetland Partnership commissioned a piece of Research into Deprivation and Social Exclusion in Shetland.  This provided a comprehensive picture of the experience and impacts on households in Shetland who are struggling.  The findings were used to inform strategic direction and activity in the years ahead.

In 2011, in recognition of the importance of ensuring the experiences of young people were known, peer research was funded, which the participants called Poverty is Bad – Let’s Fix It!!  A subsequent project led to the following films being produced by young people, living in Shetland.

Since 2005, the Shetland Partnership has consistently championed the findings: through conferences, presentations, workshops and training.  In 2015, they agreed to set up Shetland’s Commission on Tackling Inequalities. 

The Commission was tasked with assessing the nature, causes and impact of socio-economic inequalities in Shetland, and to use this to develop recommendations to reduce these inequalities.  

The Commission was independently chaired, with commissioners invited and nominated from across the public and voluntary sector.  

The Commission sat on six occasions, considering key themes related to:

• Baseline Research;
• Household Finances;
• Fuel Poverty;
• Transport;
• Geography and Communities;
• Early Intervention and Prevention.

Information was drawn from published data and reports and invited evidence from a range of agencies and communities within Shetland and beyond.  

The recommendations from the Commission were approved by the Shetland Partnership.  The evidence base, set out by the Commission, and their recommendations, have largely formed Shetland’s Partnership Plan 2018-2028.

Shetland was one of a number of areas of the UK to set up a commission, with the purpose of examining and developing approaches designed to tackle poverty and inequality, summarised in this Report by the Carnegie Trust.  

One of the recommendations from the Commission was to understand more about in-work poverty in Shetland, to provide an indication of the level of in-work poverty, and what it was like for those people experiencing it.  Living Well in a High Cost Economy was published in 2017.

'The consequences of living on a low income in Scotland's island communities' was commissioned by Shetland Islands Council in 2020 to try to understand the impact of the high cost of living on social outcomes. 

Overall, these results show that Shetland has worse social outcomes on a number of measures than would be predicted by its socioeconomic profile, but this is not evident for the other island groups. 

Child Poverty

For many years, Shetland had some of the lowest rates of child poverty in Scotland. A nationwide worsening trend had been apparent until 2019/20, however, Scotland saw a decreasing rate of children in low income families between 2019/20 – 2020/21 whereas Shetland’s rate increased significantly. 13.6% of children in Shetland were in low income families in 2020/21 compared to an average for Scotland of 15.9%. In 2022 and 2023, Scotland's trend rose again. Shetland's decreased to 11.8% in 2022, with a slight increase to 21.3% in 2023. 

We also know that we have a relatively high cost of living – the cost of living in Shetland is 20-60% higher than the UK average – meaning that many more of our children and young people may be in financial hardship than is indicated by the national figures. Our dispersed rural communities can often make it more difficult for parents to seek support, for their families.

Tackling Child Poverty In Shetland

Despite achievements we can rightly be proud of, we have a lot more to do, and are not complacent to the challenges we face; not least, we need to increase awareness across our organisations and others in the public, private and third sector of their role in tackling the drivers of child poverty. We need to ensure that all families can access the support they need to maximise their incomes and reduce their household costs – so they have more money available to them. 

Annual Child Poverty Action Reports

The purpose of the Annual Child Poverty Action Reports is to share, with a broad audience, what has been achieved and it also fulfils the duty placed on Local Authorities and NHS Boards to report annually on steps they are taking, and will take, to reduce child poverty.

View and Download the Annual Child Poverty Action Reports here