Scottish charity boss unleashes fury over poverty under SNP rule

Bad social policies don’t just cause harm, she says, they “can kill people”. We’re speaking in the week in which First Minister John Swinney claimed his government put eradicating child poverty at the top of its agenda, while simultaneously reneging on pledges to introduce universal free school meals.

His Finance Minister Shona Robison announced £500 million in cuts, savaging already creaking public services.

“What you see in Scotland,” Kelly says, “is a plethora of really lovely policies around children, but what they all have in common is one thing: they’ve never been properly resourced.

“So you get a situation where you have politicians proclaiming great statements, but the money hasn’t followed the policy.”

In a nation where foodbanks are ubiquitous and frontline services pared to the bone, there is, Kelly says, “definitely an issue about the state causing harm”.

When it comes to social policy, Scottish ministers “celebrate shiny new things, then don’t follow through”. Kelly adds: “I’m angry because I’ve a fierce belief that our country could do so much better by all our citizens. I don’t care if it’s at a Scottish or UK level, the squandered opportunities make me so angry.”

Much of her anger is personal. She grew up working class, the first in her family to attend university, and believes that if the state hadn’t offered her the help it did – like a full grant to read politics and economic history – she wouldn’t have become the woman she is today.

SallyAnn Kelly, Chief Executive of Aberlour Trust. Picture: Gordon Terris 

Her achievements are impressive, including an OBE for services to children and families. She’s become a national champion for the most vulnerable children in Scotland.

After a career as a social worker starting in 1990, she took over the running of Aberlour.

Kelly’s experience means she doesn’t just deal in abstract words and fundraising. She and her staff roll up their sleeves and get on the frontline with youngsters in need.

Aberlour provides residential and fostering care for children at risk, and rehab services for parents suffering addiction. Crucially, it digs deep into its own coffers to provide funds, which can be literally life-saving, for destitute parents. Staff also support children with physical disabilities and mental health problems.

“The First Minster has been clear that his number one priority is ending child poverty. I applaud that,” she says of the latest SNP Programme for Government.

“But that commitment must be matched by clear actions and investment or else it’s simply warm words. There’s nothing I can see in this Programme for Government that’s transformational or will shift the dial on child poverty.

“The truth is poverty is a political choice. Children don’t choose to grow up in poverty, but governments make choices that either improve people’s lives or they don’t.”

For Kelly, addressing child poverty makes economic sense.

Blame

Kelly adds: “We have two governments now – one in Holyrood and one in Westminster – both claiming to be committed to ending child poverty. But each wants to blame the other for their own political difficulties. We need a different politics now across the UK, one of collaboration and an explicit focus on our people, and values-driven decision-making.

“If each government committed to working together to achieve the shared ambition to end child poverty then we, as one of the richest nations in the world, would begin to see some progress that would make a real and meaningful difference in the lives of our poorest children and families.

“It cannot be beyond our collective wit to achieve lasting change for those furthest away from power and privilege. That’s what I urge John Swinney and Sir Keir Starmer to do.”

She continued: “We’ve now had three first ministers pledging to make child poverty their absolute priority. The time is long overdue for us to move beyond incremental shifts at best, and sound bite at worst.”

Kelly called for “a mature, non-tribal conversation about the kind of Scotland we want to create, and what that means for the commitments we follow through on for people who, for a multitude of reasons, find themselves in need of additional support”.

She added: “Sadly, too many proclamations over the last decade have faltered beyond that high-level announcement. Resources haven’t followed key promises, and to our eternal shame, promises have been made and broken to some children who have only known uncertainty and broken promises.

“Our care-experienced children continue to be let down too often. That’s unacceptable regardless of whether the original promise or intent came from a sincere place.”

For Kelly, addressing child poverty makes economic sense. When children raised in poverty grow up there’s greater risk of ill health, homelessness, addiction, early death and even jail. If we get it right for the poorest kids, we get it right for everyone, she believes.

“Lifting our people out of poverty and destitution benefits us all. The evidence could not be clearer.”

Kelly emphasises that “if a child is living in poverty” – and the relationship with their parents is under stress due to poverty – then “we know those children are at higher risk of experiencing further adversities”.

Indeed, simply being poor can lead to children being taken into care – even if there is no parental neglect, she explains. Care-experienced children often have far worse life outcomes than other children, including an increased risk of suicide.

Kelly’s working-class childhood defines her values. “I got a free education,” she says. In the 1980s, students from low-income families were supported by government grants to attend university.

“There were opportunities afforded to me as a teenager that had never been afforded to my mother and father who were both really smart. I was born into a family which understood social inequality.”

Today there’s no grant and although in Scotland tuition fees are covered by the state, students still accrue huge amounts of debt through loans, meaning higher education is often unobtainable for the poorest young people.

State support, though, changed Kelly’s life. She became a white-collar professional and was able to give her children a middle-class upbringing. Would she have become the woman she is today without that state support? “Probably not, no” Kelly replies.

Poor parental mental health will obviously impact on children

Harm

SINCE she graduated, however, “the prevailing narrative around ‘the poor’ has changed considerably. We’ve become more interested in apportioning blame, as if there’s the deserving and undeserving poor. As a nation, in Scotland – and the UK as a whole – we need to have a different conversation about the social contract we have with our people”.

Austerity is harming children. Of that, Kelly has no doubt. The “overwhelming majority” of low-income parents “are absolutely trying to do the best they possibly can, but they find themselves in intolerable situations – situations which if you or I found ourselves in, we’d find equally intolerable”.

She adds: “When you cannot feed your children, or you have to choose between you eating or them eating, or sending them to school in uniforms that are too small, or ill-fitting shoes, the level of stress that creates in families is really significant.

“It’s not inevitable that the children of families living in poor situations face additional adversities, but it certainly increases the risk. What we don’t have is a consistent, predictable, safe, state response to supporting those families. We’ve layers of judgment, barriers to help, threats made to parents that children will be removed. We need more compassion.”

Evidently parents in poverty will suffer more with mental health problems than parents who are financially secure. In turn, poor parental mental health will obviously impact on their children.

The “vast majority” of parents who come to Aberlour “ask for food, clothes for their children, and money to put in the electric meter. It’s basic needs we’re dealing with.”

Around 65% of the parents Aberlour helps are working but on low wages. Many owe the state money for “rent arrears, council tax, and school meal debt”. Those debts knock them “below the universal credit level” – plunging them even further into poverty. “Families already disadvantaged because they’re on the breadline are doubly disadvantaged because they’re getting automatic removals from their income before it hits the bank.”

That means “they’re more likely not to be able to feed their children properly or pay for public transport to get to work, they’re more likely to not have good health outcomes”. It’s a classic poverty trap.

Kelly says trying to recovering these debts often costs more than the actual sums owed. Is she saying the state can be as cruel as any bailiff or debt collector? “Yes,” she replies. Kelly believes these debts should be written off in order to end the cycle of pushing the poor even deeper into poverty.

She notes that addiction and domestic abuse aren’t class-specific. These issues are as prevalent among the middle classes as those on low incomes. It’s just that middle-class families are able to access better services, or pay for help if needed. Financial security sandbags families, meaning they can better withstand other adversities. Being poor means problems like addiction can simply overwhelm parents. Indeed, Kelly says that when it comes to domestic budgets it’s often the poorest families who have far more money sense.

“If you want to accuse anybody of poor budgeting, accuse me. I’ve got far more money coming through my bank account every month and I sometimes still get into ridiculous situations.” When it comes to low-income parents, their “wherewithal around financing is marvellous”.

Kelly says the closest middle-class families ever came to experiencing the lives of low-income families was during lockdown when they were unable to enjoy even small pleasures like trips to the cinema or meals out. It was a case of “welcome to my world”.

Instead of simply abandoning children when they leave care at 18, the state should offer support until they reach 30, Kelly believes

Prejudice

However, during lockdown, poor children went without the luxuries middle-class families enjoyed like internet access and computers. Kelly and her counterpart Mary Glasgow at the charity Children 1st worked to get disadvantaged youngsters online amid the pandemic “so they could actually learn”.

Kelly has seen “prejudice” towards the poor, even in her own extended family, which now enjoys a middle-class lifestyle much different to her own upbringing. One young relative spoke about “benefit fraudsters”, and Kelly had to school them in the realities of life on the breadline. “The majority of families living in poverty are working, but they’re on low wages and can’t earn enough to sustain their families.”

She adds: “We work with children and families who are furthest from realising their rights – whether that’s education, health or social rights.”

Kelly highlights several “progressive policies” which have been put forward but not properly funded by the Scottish government, such as “Getting It Right For Every Child” – a commitment to make sure every young person fulfils their potential – the Curriculum for Excellence, and promises to improve the care system. “They’ve all got something in common and it’s that the money hasn’t followed the policy.

“As a nation, if you have loads of different strategic intentions, you’ve got an immediate problem about what your priority is. We need at a UK and Scotland level to chose significant areas for development over the next 10 years and invest in them heavily. A relentless focus on strategic priorities brings better outcomes.”

That means ministers taking financial choices to prevent “state harm”, and shifting money from fixing problems to preventing them. One example might be spending less money on prisons and more money on early years care for children to stop young people heading to jail in the first place, as poverty often accelerates the path to prison. “If you don’t change the fiscal rules, then you maintain the status quo,” she says.

Instead of simply abandoning children when they leave care at 18, the state should offer support until they reach 30, Kelly believes. That would reduce prison numbers, drug addiction, crime, and early deaths. “It’s a much better use of money than leaving these children to flounder.”

Work by Aberlour proves that spending preventatively saves money. Drug rehab programmes for mothers saves £10 of taxpayers’ money for every £1 spent. Other programmes save £16 per £1 spent.The failure of governments to understand this, and act on it, infuriates Kelly. Indeed, it makes he want to “scream”, she says. “I talk about my internal banshee. I could rant for Scotland about this stuff. Part of it is just the madness. Jesus, it’s as plain as the nose on your face what you need to do here.”

Instead of society deeming children out on the streets at night “wee neds, maybe we should be asking why these children are in town centres causing mayhem. What’s the alternative? Are there youth clubs? Where’s mum and dad – have they got issues? There’s a really punitive response”.

SallyAnn Kelly, Chief Executive of Aberlour Trust

Destitute

ABERLOUR steps in where the state fails, often paying off debts for destitute families. That “gets to the root cause” and stops parents returning repeatedly for help with finances. “My frustration with politics, with our country, is we understand root causes, but we still ignore addressing root causes.” Giving money directly to poor families works, she says.

Kelly helped oversee the introduction of the baby box to Scotland and supported the policy. But she returns to the issue of the Scottish Government’s obsession with “shiny new things”. When the baby box was introduced in other countries like Finland, “it was part of a much broader offer of support”. She adds: “When the needle shifted [in Finland], it wasn’t a box that shifted it, it was the overall experience of parents and the kindness, compassion and support they received from the state. So in isolation the baby box is nice, but it’s not as critical as the right type of support for families when they need it.

“That’s an example of where the policy intent was good, but the follow-through and implementation lacked credibility because it focused more on the shiny new thing than deep, ingrained progressive change for the benefit of children in Scotland.”

Kelly has similar concerns regarding the so-called “Promise” to improve the care system. “There’s not a mature enough conversation about what we actually need to do to realise the ‘Promise’.”

“Managerialism” in the public sector has become damaging and “counter-productive”. She says if the state’s “focus is money and budgets as opposed to getting the best for people you make poor decisions a lot of the time”.

That’s why Aberlour campaigns for the abolition of the two-child benefit cap. The policy simply perpetuates child poverty – even though the UK Government claims it wants to tackle child poverty. What Kelly wants is “mature, adult” thinking. She accepts that “righting the wrongs of 14 years of poor social policy” under the Conservatives cannot be fixed in just a few months by the new Labour government “but they need to understand that for some people they can’t wait, their children can’t wait for better social security decisions. They need action now”.

Austerity continuing under Labour and the SNP will simply “result in more families living in poverty and experiencing all the associated social, economic and health outcomes that come with that”. She says: “If a government deliberately takes that position without fundamentally thinking about how it could order money differently, then that in itself is harmful because they’re doing it despite knowing evidence to the contrary.”

Kelly adds: “Poor social policy can kill people. They may not set out to kill people, but poor social policy is dangerous.” It’s not good enough to simply say poverty is “a wickedly complicated issue”. Some problems, she notes, “are dead easy to solve”.

Aberlour has shown that with the two rehabilitation homes it runs in Dundee and Falkirk. Mothers with addiction problems stay in the homes, with their children, while recovering. It not only saves the state money but stops children going into care. Similar work by Aberlour in Glasgow and Edinburgh was cut previously due to reductions in drug and alcohol budgets. Self-evidently, such investment also reduces drug deaths. Scotland has the worst level of drug deaths in Europe.

Addiction

ABERLOUR spent £1.5 million of its own money on the Falkirk and Dundee mother-and-child rehab units. The Scottish Government has provided funding for operating costs to 2026. “There’s uncertainty about what happens after that, we don’t know if funding will continue.”

Kelly’s mission is to keep families together unless it’s unsafe for children. But there are just two Aberlour rehab homes. It’s a drop in the ocean compared to the addiction problems in Scotland. “We need more of these houses.”

Aberlour also runs residential homes for kids who need to be removed from their parents. The charity ensures that children stay within their local community – rather than being sent “miles away” to somewhere they don’t know. Staff also work alongside parents. Maintaining a child’s connections to where they live and their families is vital for kids in care.

Indeed, the Scottish Government needs to think “more local”. Kelly says power should be devolved down from central government to local communities so they can make better decisions around children’s services.

“Part of the democratic deficit experienced by Scottish citizens – myself included – is the centralising force at Scottish Government level and disempowerment of local government.”

Nowhere has Aberlour fought harder for children than in the arena of school meal debt. Many working families on low incomes don’t qualify for free school meals, and got into debt when it came to paying for their children to eat at school.

These families faced “over £1m in school meal debt. Some children would go to school and wouldn’t be allowed a proper meal because their parents were in debt. They’d get a wee cheese sandwich and a drink of water. It was so stigmatising”.

Councils have sent debt collectors after families for school meal debt. Aberlour successfully campaigned for the debt to be written off. But that only counts for last year. The debts are mounting up once more and councils can again send in debt collectors.

“Nobody sends their child to school with no money for a meal if they can afford to pay it, for God’s sake,” Kelly says. She’s meeting politicians in Holyrood this week about “debt to public bodies”.

Other debts like rent arrears can cripple poor families. Pay-day loans to cover one debt just create more debt. “And if the cost of recovering the debt is greater than the debt itself, why the hell would you bother?” Kelly asks. It seems like the state operating a policy of punishment for punishment’s sake.

Scotland “needs a level of honesty about the harm that poor state interventions create. The manner in which we choose to manage the debt owed to public bodies by our poorest families is a classic example of that harm”.

Drug abuse is increasing in Scotland

Danger

SCOTLAND’S attainment gap in educational outcomes between rich and poor children “doesn’t surprise” Kelly. The policy to close the gap “was born out of good intent but the implementation was poor”. Funds should have been targeted at families, not schools. Kelly says that research shows throwing money at schools means “the educational poverty-related attainment gap will persist”. Investing in family support closes the gap.

“The lives of the poorest children are blighted by lack of opportunity – not a lack of capacity or capability. If you see increasing numbers of children impacted by poverty, and the layering effects of poor mental health, reduced social mobility and social opportunities, then inevitably there are children so far from having the ability to realise their rights that they become disconnected from mainstream society despite the best efforts of their parents. That’s a dangerous place for society to be.”

So is poverty “the worm in the apple” when it comes to the child mental health crisis? “Absolutely. Poverty opens up the experiences of other adversities. Stigma and prejudice is a significant contributor to that.”

Kelly asks the public to consider how any child would feel if they were unable to go on a school trip with their classmates because their family was too poor. Equally, failing to make free school meals universal means the poorest children will face stigma as they will be singled out as being in receipt of benefits. One appalling truth is that poverty itself can drive children into care. “If you think about the most punitive state interventions, they’re very much focused on our poorest communities,” Kelly adds.

Speaking as an experienced social worker, she says that “often there’s no proper assessment of the impact of poverty” on families. So social workers will see “material deprivation – not enough food in the cupboard, houses below standards you’d find acceptable – and that’s then looked at through the lens of neglect. Children are seen as neglected, rather than it being looked at through the lens of poverty.

“So if you start talking about neglect, without wider reference to the economic situation that the family is trying to survive, that can often result in punitive responses. You’re only looking at material deprivation and seeing that as a wilful act on behalf of the parents, as opposed to a situation the parents are struggling with.”

If social workers don’t also look at the state of the relationship between parent and child then the “assessment isn’t holistic enough. So the conclusion you need to come to in those circumstances is, yes, the children of some of the poorest families are removed at times because there hasn’t been a proper assessment and it’s only material deprivation that’s assessed”.

“The richness of childhood” itself, Kelly feels, “is under threat because of the way society is being fractured and changed. The experiences of children are vastly different than they were for us”.

And it’s anger at that loss of hope and opportunity for Scotland’s poorest children which motivates Kelly and keeps her going. “I use my anger,” she explains. However, she corrects herself. Anger isn’t a strong enough word. “I’m raging,” she adds.