Chamber and committees

Public services are fundamental to the Government’s ambitions, including tackling poverty, and reform is about strengthening those services now and into the future.

Our Public Service Reform Strategy recognises that better joined-up, preventative public services can improve outcomes for people while supporting fiscal sustainability, including by ensuring people can access the right support when they need it.

We recognise that women, particularly those experiencing poverty, can be disproportionately affected where services are difficult to access or do not work effectively together. Reform and efficiency are therefore not about doing less with less, but about strengthening services through prevention, better integration and reducing unnecessary duplication and administrative costs.

Our approach includes ambitious work on Whole Family Support and the development of a new Prevention Unit, which will help address the drivers of demand, support greater collaboration across sectors and strengthen investment in preventative approaches. The Government is also developing preventative budgeting arrangements to improve our understanding of investment in prevention and its contribution to improving outcomes.

We continue to listen carefully to the views and evidence of stakeholders, including evidence provided through parliamentary scrutiny of Public Service Reform and its equality impacts. This engagement will continue as individual reform programmes are developed and implemented, ensuring that equality considerations, including the experiences of women and families experiencing poverty, inform delivery.

Eradicating child poverty remains the Scottish Government’s foremost priority, and Public Service Reform has an important contribution to make through earlier intervention, more holistic support and public services designed around the needs of people and families.