By Angela Morgan, chief executive of Includem

IT is sometimes easy to suspect that, like death and taxes, child poverty is one of the few certainties in an uncertain world. It might be easy but it would be wrong.

Sadly, through grim repetition, the figures are losing their power to shock but the welter of research papers, official reports and statistical bulletins should not obscure one simple truth. Tens of thousands of children are growing up in poverty in Scotland. Their parents may well have grown up in poverty too. Our challenge is to ensure their children and grandchildren do not.

Last month, the latest official figures revealed 26 per cent of Scotland’s children are living in relative poverty, around 260,000 young people, up four per cent on the previous year. Every one of those is a child facing challenges, now and in the years to come, that many will never overcome. Their lives are being blighted by poverty, their social, emotional and cognitive development stunted, their prospects undermined, their potential curtailed, and their futures limited.

The Scottish Government’s reintroduction of binding targets to reduce child poverty is welcome but meeting, not setting, those targets must be the priority.

The causes of child poverty are complex. Ending child poverty –

or at least easing its debilitating impact on young lives – will be equally complex – complex, bt achievable.

There are almost as many definitions of poverty as there are causes and as many routes out of poverty as there are definitions. There are many complicated factors but also a few fundamental principles. One, clearly, is the need to increase the income of many families living in our poorest postcodes,although work and a salary may not be enough on its own.

Another fundamental is the overwhelming case for early intervention. Identifying the challenges facing many families as swiftly, as early, as possible and working effectively to prevent them worsening is crucial. There is, rightly, a lot of focus on early years and pre-school children but quick, determined action at any stage, at any age, offers a far better chance of more positive – and cost-effective – outcomes.

At Includem we work with young people when many of them are at – or approaching – a turning point in their lives. Some are at risk of falling out of school, some are falling into the criminal justice system. Many, probably most, have grown up in chaotic, turbulent homes in families marked by issues around mental health and addiction and, of course, poverty.

We help them to engage better at school or to rebuild their family relationships or to stop risk-taking behaviour. Whatever the service, whatever the issue, in most cases, the young people we are working with have grown up in poverty. It is not the only reason for the challenges they face but it is a common, if not constant, contributing factor. It is certainly no surprise that the addresses of the young people we work with almost perfectly match the poorest neighbourhoods identified by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Reports and figures can sometimes reduce poverty to an abstraction. There is nothing abstract, however, about children not having a bed to sleep on and going to school hungry, nothing abstract about homes that are always just a few pounds away from the brink. These children grow up in stress and uncertainty so is it surprising they grow into their teenage years living life minute

to minute with no thought to tomorrow never mind the rest of their lives?

Consistent, effective work to ease the impact of poverty on children and their futures demands consistent, effective planning between Scotland’s local authorities and the third sector. That is why the Coalition of Care and Support Providers, representing the leading charities working with Scotland’s children, have launched the #plan4children campaign urging candidates in May’s elections to promise greater partnership for the most effective planning.

Child poverty must be tackled across Scotland but while thinking national, we must act local and our local authorities are crucial. At the hub of children’s services, they can help ensure we are working together and in step. That synchronised action based on good strategic planning – shaped by the views and experience of families living in poverty – will mean our work is far better targeted and far more effective.

That kind of planned, targeted and concerted action must be the seam running through our work to ensure that, while death and taxes remain sadly certain, there is nothing inevitable about child poverty.