The Theory of Change

How do we change the lives of people in Scotland, for the better?

The Theory of Change is a way of describing how change will happen. Viewed as a road map for change, it starts from where we are  now, aims at a better place in the future, and lays out the routes for getting there.

Where we are now is not good.

Whether you prefer the statistics and maps of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, or to walk the streets of Glasgow, you'll see poverty, and increasing poverty.

So how do we make change, for the better?

The model provided by the Theory of Change starts with a series of data and assumptions about how things are now. It then lays out different routes - "interventions" - that lead to a better place. So we start with the data in the Scottish Government's Policy Briefing that there were 880,000 people living in absolute poverty in Scotland in 2012/3, and then work out what we are going to do about it.

Charities in Scotland are each applying their own Theory of  Change. Last Thursday's report from the Poverty Alliance showed charities such as the Trussell Trust are intervening with food banks. Their rationale is that we can relieve the most desperate effects of poverty by providing food, and while you are doing that, providing nutrition advice, cookery classes and emotional support. Seventy percent of Scotland's 167 food banks are providing emotional support for their clients.

Meanwhile, Save the Children in Scotland has a different Theory of Change. Their "Eat, Sleep, Learn, Play!" programme, launched in 2012, provides essential household items such as beds, cookers and pushchairs, to families with young children living on a low income. The rationale of Save the Children is that by meeting families needs during the important early stages of development, families can improve the quality of their children's' lives and help them fulfil their potential.

Save the Children also campaigns. So does the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, whose principal rationale is to "work to get a better life for low-income families in Scotland through campaigning and lobbying."

Risk is implicit in a Theory of Change. If your rationale for ending or at least reducing poverty is to provide food banks and emotional support then your downside risk of failure is going to be linked to delivery; how many people can we reach from our food bank? Upside, you know that if you get a package of food into the hands of a poor family then you have fed them for the day, or the week. 

If you campaign and lobby then your risk of failure is high. You are trying to get the system to change - to get politicians to listen to your message and to translate it into policy. That is very hard to achieve. Despite years of campaigning and lobbying, poverty is still endemic in Scotland. The Scottish Poverty Briefing shows that one in six families in Scotland lives on less than 60% of the average wage. There is a substantial, in fact demonstrable, risk that campaigning does not work - it does not translate into Government action.

So why bother with the politicians?

Because while the risk of failure is high, the outcome if you succeed is enormous. If you could persuade a future Government to give up Trident and spend the money on the poor, or, better, increase taxation on those on higher incomes to provide greater shares for those on low or no income, then you would dramatically transform the lives of almost a million people in Scotland. This,in Theory of Change, is "system change."

Politicians are just the pawns in this Theory of Change chess-game. We need them to move across the board in the right direction (not just to protect the Kings, Queens and Knights of our society.) So when you vote in May, vote for system  change. Vote for the party that will change the system in Scotland, for the better.

1.James, Cathy. Theory of Change Review. London: Comic Relief, September 2011. http://www.actknowledge.org/resources/documents/James_ToC.pdf.
2 Image from http://www.relativ.co.za/relativ-impact/theory-of-change-workshop/
3 Scottish Government, St Andrew’s House. “Poverty Briefing.” Website Section, December 18, 2014. http://www.scotland.gov.uk//Topics/Statistics/Browse/Social-Welfare/IncomePoverty/povertybrief.

For Richer, for Poorer. And a Tartan Trident.

If you take a bus down Ferry Road in Edinburgh you will move from wealth to poverty as you head west. Or you can just stand in Stewart's Melville (private) College's playing fields and chuck a stone west to Pilton. You will be throwing your stone from an area ranked as amongst the least deprived into an area that is the most deprived, according to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Edinburgh, deprived

This week two reports have talked about poverty.

What Do We Know about In-Work Poverty? [1] shows that most poor people (52%) in Scotland live in homes where at least one person has a job.  Worse, the proportion of poor children in homes with an adult in work has increased from 40% in 1999 to almost two thirds today.

What is going on? Doesn't a job give you an income? Well yes, and poverty is of course related to work (the rate of poverty amongst households where no-one is in paid work is of course higher.) But people in low-paid jobs - earning less than £7.40 an hour - have double the poverty risk of all workers. Low-paid women are especially vulnerable; mothers returning to work are more likely to end up in low-paid jobs, says the report, which highlights the almost 20% difference in wages paid to men versus women in the private sector.

Scotland comes off badly in the low-pay stakes compared to other countries: 19.5% of employees in Scotland were low-paid in 2011 compared to say 14% in New Zealand or 15% in Spain.

Low-wage work is a dead end - workers are less likely to be offered training, and more low-paid workers become unemployed than their better paid colleagues. So families are juggling low-pay, no-pay and benefits and it is, above all, the children who suffer.

Meanwhile, Oxfam has shown in Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More [2] - published this week in time for Davos - the link between wealth, business and tax. The richest 1% own 48% of global wealth - and the trend is upwards, for the rich. The pyramid is skewed so the richest fifth of the population own more than nine-tenths of the wealth, meaning that the rest of humanity, the 80%, scrabble over just 5.5% of global wealth.

Cleverly, Oxfam shows that the businesses that our wealthiest people invest in are the same businesses that spend the most on lobbying on budget issues, particularly lobbying to reduce taxation. Thus there is a vicious circle in which wealth is held by a very few, who ensure via their businesses that taxes…for those few rich…remain low. This explains why David Cameron and Giddy Gordon Osborne have been so reluctant to do the obvious thing - tax wealth, to reduce the poverty gap.

This is stupid economics. As the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has shown [3], a child growing up in a poor household is likely to have a poor outcome - to become a poor adult - because of a range of issues including stress and poor health. CPAG has calculated the cost - to all of us - of allowing poverty to take hold. The cost of allowing 110,000 children in Scotland to be affected by in-work poverty could be £1.1 billion. 

£1.1 billion! We could almost afford to buy our own Tartan Trident for that…

1 What Do We Know about In-Work Poverty? A Summary of the Evidence (Social Research Series. Edinburgh: The Scottish Government, January 21, 2015. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2015/01/3233/downloads)

2 Hardoon, Deborah. Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More. Cowley, UK: Oxfam International, January 19, 2015. http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/wealth-having-it-all-and-wanting-more.

3  Farthing, Rys. Local Authorities and Child Poverty: Balancing Threats and Opportunities. London: Child Poverty Action Group, July 2013. http://www.cpag.org.uk/content/cpag-publishes-cost-child-poverty-every-local-authority-and-constituency.