Youth work often works at the coalface of poverty in some of Scotland’s most deprived communities. With its person-centred, community-based approach, youth work plays a crucial role in addressing the root causes of poverty by promoting personal and social development, improving educational outcomes, and enhancing health and wellbeing.

Through a heightened understanding of young people’s complex needs when it comes to poverty, youth workers are able to provide targeted support, supporting young people to develop the skills and confidence necessary to overcome barriers and achieve their potential.

Youth work is crucial to tackling child poverty. We benefit from growing evidence that a dignified, youth work approach to addressing poverty works.

• It builds health and wellbeing;
• It improves attendance and engagement with learning, and increases attainment;
• It promotes achievement and leads to positive post-school destinations, helping to lift young people out of poverty.

Youth workers often build relationships with the whole family. This is often targeted at low-income families or those with protected characteristics and contributes to tackling poverty, raising attainment, supporting family wellbeing and enabling parents and carers to take up or sustain work, training and study.

In 2023, we produced a policy briefing paper to comprehensively outline the transformative impact youth work has on tackling the causes and symptoms of poverty in Scotland.

The paper demonstrates how a youth work is perfectly suited to play a vital role in the delivery of the Scottish Government’s Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan (2022-2027) through a range of approaches:

In 2020 YouthLink Scotland was funded by the Scottish Government to coordinate and support a pilot programme, focused on addressing food insecurity and learning loss in the school holidays. It took place during summer 2020, targeted at young people (S1-S6) identified by trusted professionals as being at risk of food insecurity or learning loss.

Six Regional Improvement Collaborative local authority areas participated in the pilot programme. Each developed its own delivery model, aiming to support 20 young people.

The aims of the pilot were to:

• Identify and engage young people who were most at risk of food insecurity, including those newly-vulnerable due to Covid-19;
• Deliver a dignified approach to food insecurity;
• Embed measures to tackle food insecurity within informal learning;
• Deliver learning opportunities tailored to the needs of the cohort;
• Take a holistic approach to supporting families affected by food insecurity – where possible and appropriate engaging the whole family.

Following the pilot, the positive impacts included: