Evaluation of the Child Poverty Strategy for Wales: final report

The overarching aim of the evaluation was “to understand the impact of the Welsh Government’s strategy on child poverty, but also importantly what impact the existence of a strategy has made on the actions of the Welsh Government and Public Bodies to reduce child poverty”.

Main points

• More could be done to link economic growth strategies with poverty objectives.
• There is no strong evidence that the scale of programming is enough to make the scale of change that is necessary.
• The duty placed on Local Authorities and other Public Bodies has had a limited impact to date in terms of new programming or allocation of additional resources to meet child poverty aims. The measure encouraged public bodies to review their programming and assess it for gaps; in the vast majority of cases this process did not highlight any significant gaps. The main impacts of the duty have been enhanced coordination between programmes and services at a local level, and improvements in monitoring systems.
• Positive steps have been put in place by the Welsh Government since 2010 to reduce Child Poverty in Wales, and policies are now in place to support the tackling poverty objectives across the Welsh Government.