Current status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether it has received any reports of underspend in Whole Family Wellbeing Fund allocations, and, if so, how much this has amounted to in each financial year that the fund has operated.
In line with other reporting from programmes funded via the General Revenue Grant, we do not routinely gather detail on the totality of Children’s Services Planning Partnerships spend, instead focusing on the activities they are delivering, outcomes achieved, and resources allocated to each activity. However, to help understand future funding needs we did gather some limited data from CSPPs regarding their spending plans.
The following table collates information from the 29 CSPP areas who responded.
Year 1 – 22-23 | Year 2 – 23-24 | |
Spend | £5.2m | £16.5m |
Allocated funding (29 CSPPs) | £25.5m | £25.5m |
It was anticipated that CSPPs may not spend their full allocations in the early years of the Programme, as CSPPs were encouraged to assess their current delivery of family support and develop plans accordingly. Wider factors will also have influenced spend, such as year 1 funding being announced mid-year; recruitment challenges which have hindered spend; and proactive multi-year profiling of allocations by individual CSPPs to support their local planning and delivery.
CSPPs are permitted to carry over underspend into the subsequent year, and WFWF allocations must be spent in line with criteria which provides flexibility whilst protecting the objectives and outcomes of the funding.
Our evaluation of Year 1 of the WFWF has shown that CSPPs are finding the funding beneficial, and that our approach to the funding has afforded them the autonomy and flexibility needed to tailor their family support activities to local needs.
A breakdown of Whole Family Wellbeing Funding can be found in the answer to question S6W-29612 on 17 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers