Change and Transformation in the Public Sector
Transforming the support for children and families in Scotland
The Scottish Government are undertaking a multi-year programme to take responsibility for delivering social security benefits to the citizens of Scotland for the first time. This is the most significant devolution of powers and required establishing new legislation and policies to drive improved outcomes for the people of Scotland.
At the core of these new social security policies is the desire to make a material difference in the lives of children in Scotland and a determined push to ensure no child grows up in poverty. To achieve this, the Scottish Government needed to introduce new benefits to support low-income families in Scotland and families who need extra help with costs for children and young people with a disability. These new services needed to be delivered based on the evidence of needs from the citizens they will support and the principle of treating everyone with dignity, fairness and respect.
The Scottish Government engaged IBM Consulting to continue as their delivery partner for this next phase of the programme to ensure that the services could be rapidly launched against a backdrop of the global pandemic and deliver reduced processing time through greater automation.
Working in collaboration, the joint teams have successfully launched and scaled two new complex benefit services, introducing new cross-government data sharing, new strategic platforms and helping to support over 108,000 children in Scotland with payments of over £48 million. The work has been described as an “absolute game-changer in the fight to end child poverty” by the Child Poverty Action Group.
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