Cliciwch yma am y Gymraeg
In Wales, 24% of children are living in poverty (Department for Work and Pensions, 2025a). Progress towards alleviating child poverty rates in the UK has been slow; a UNICEF report ranked progress made in the UK to reduce child poverty at 37th out of 39 high income countries (UNICEF, 2023). Rhondda Cynon Taf, a county borough in the south-east of Wales, has consistently showed high rates of child poverty, with recent figures suggesting that 27.2% of children aged under 16 live in relative poverty (Department for Work and Pensions, 2025a).
In December 2024, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee of Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council formed a Child Poverty Working Group. RCT HDRC was asked to support the Working Group to:
- explore and examine the aspects of child poverty that are within the Council’s remit to address; and
- develop evidence-informed recommendations the Council could implement to break the cycle of poverty for children and families in RCT.
To do this, RCT HDRC worked closely with the Working Group to identify research questions and supported them to access, interpret and use the six different types of evidence from the HDRC’s ‘evidence pie’ (page ii) to answer these research questions. To ensure lived experience evidence was integrated into the process, RCT HDRC supported voluntary sector organisations and people with lived experience of poverty to join the working group. For the first time, members of the public had full voting rights on an Overview and Scrutiny Working Group. This report describes the process of supporting the Working Group and the evidence that they reviewed to make their 18 recommendations (see Appendix 4).
Approach and research questions
Initial meetings with the Working Group were used to agree Terms of Reference and determine the area of focus, given the scale of the topic of child poverty. The Wales Centre for Public Policy, a collaborating partner of the HDRC, facilitated a workshop to identify areas of interest within the Working Group, following a presentation on their programme of work on poverty stigma (see Morgan, Coles-Riley and Hill-Dixon, 2024). Subsequently, Members were given the opportunity to vote on their areas of interest. This resulted in the following agreed overarching research question:
How can we work with communities to make services more welcoming and empowering for children and families affected by poverty?
This question enabled us to focus on:
- Areas where the Council has agency to act
- How the Council could change how it works with community partners, as well as making changes to Council-run services; and
- How stigma could be reduced, as well as making it easier for residents to access services.
We then developed sub-research questions to break down the overarching question. Each sub-question allowed us to draw on and present a broad range of data and evidence to Members. Initially, these supported Members to access and interpret national and international evidence with a broad focus. Given the significant scope of the topic, Members were then asked to decide on which areas were most important and relevant to RCT and its residents. Subsequent sub-questions then focused on supporting Members to access and interpret more localised evidence about context and experiences in RCT. This approach involved some decision points where Members used evidence presented to them to identify specific areas of focus and funnel down from broad national evidence to more local data. Overall, the process meant that RCT HDRC provided Members with multiple different sources of information from across our Evidence Pie, with this providing a basis for them to develop evidence-based and tangible recommendations that could make a difference for residents in RCT.
In practice, this meant that we first conducted a scoping review of academic and grey literature to understand what services had the biggest impact on poverty, the barriers to those services, and what works to increase uptake (RQ1-3). We then reviewed organisational data and population data to better understand what services were currently delivered in RCT, and the uptake of these services (Q4-5). The last two questions (Q6-7) related to the specific barriers to accessing services in RCT, and the opportunities for change locally to make services more welcoming and empowering. Table 1 below provides an overview of the research questions, methods and evidence used.
Table 1: Methods and evidence used for each sub-research question
Overarching Research Question: How can we work with communities to make services more welcoming and empowering for children and families affected by poverty? |
Sub-Research Questions (RQs) | Methods | Evidence |
1. Which services are most important for poverty alleviation? | - Conversations with academic experts
- Scoping review
| - Academic evidence
- Lived experience (from academic evidence)
|
2. What are the barriers to accessing the most important services? | - Conversations with academic experts
- Scoping review
| - Academic evidence
- Lived experience (from academic evidence)
|
3. What works to increase access/uptake for people in poverty? | - Conversations with academic experts
- Scoping review
| - Academic evidence
- Lived experience (from academic evidence)
- Impact measurement data
|
4. Which of the most important services for poverty alleviation are being delivered in RCT? | - Data gathering and analysis
- Conversations with professionals and lived experience representatives
| - Organisational data
- Professional knowledge
|
5. What is the uptake of these services in RCT? | - Data gathering and analysis
- Conversations with professionals
| - Population data
- Organisational data
- Professional knowledge
|
6. What are the barriers to accessing important services for poverty alleviation experienced by low income children and families in RCT? | - Survey
- Workshops with voluntary sector organisations
- Qualitative interviews and focus groups
- Evidence panels
| - Professional knowledge
- Lived experience
|
7. What would work to make the most important services for poverty alleviation more welcoming and empowering? | - Survey
- Workshops with voluntary sector organisations
- Qualitative interviews and focus groups
- Evidence panels
| - Professional knowledge
- Lived experience
|
Read the next section: Review questions 1 and 2: Which services are most important for poverty alleviation and what are the barriers to access?
Cliciwch yma am y Gymraeg
In Wales, 24% of children are living in poverty (Department for Work and Pensions, 2025a). Progress towards alleviating child poverty rates in the UK has been slow; a UNICEF report ranked progress made in the UK to reduce child poverty at 37th out of 39 high income countries (UNICEF, 2023). Rhondda Cynon Taf, a county borough in the south-east of Wales, has consistently showed high rates of child poverty, with recent figures suggesting that 27.2% of children aged under 16 live in relative poverty (Department for Work and Pensions, 2025a).
In December 2024, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee of Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council formed a Child Poverty Working Group. RCT HDRC was asked to support the Working Group to:
- explore and examine the aspects of child poverty that are within the Council’s remit to address; and
- develop evidence-informed recommendations the Council could implement to break the cycle of poverty for children and families in RCT.
To do this, RCT HDRC worked closely with the Working Group to identify research questions and supported them to access, interpret and use the six different types of evidence from the HDRC’s ‘evidence pie’ (page ii) to answer these research questions. To ensure lived experience evidence was integrated into the process, RCT HDRC supported voluntary sector organisations and people with lived experience of poverty to join the working group. For the first time, members of the public had full voting rights on an Overview and Scrutiny Working Group. This report describes the process of supporting the Working Group and the evidence that they reviewed to make their 18 recommendations (see Appendix 4).
Approach and research questions
Initial meetings with the Working Group were used to agree Terms of Reference and determine the area of focus, given the scale of the topic of child poverty. The Wales Centre for Public Policy, a collaborating partner of the HDRC, facilitated a workshop to identify areas of interest within the Working Group, following a presentation on their programme of work on poverty stigma (see Morgan, Coles-Riley and Hill-Dixon, 2024). Subsequently, Members were given the opportunity to vote on their areas of interest. This resulted in the following agreed overarching research question:
How can we work with communities to make services more welcoming and empowering for children and families affected by poverty?
This question enabled us to focus on:
- Areas where the Council has agency to act
- How the Council could change how it works with community partners, as well as making changes to Council-run services; and
- How stigma could be reduced, as well as making it easier for residents to access services.
We then developed sub-research questions to break down the overarching question. Each sub-question allowed us to draw on and present a broad range of data and evidence to Members. Initially, these supported Members to access and interpret national and international evidence with a broad focus. Given the significant scope of the topic, Members were then asked to decide on which areas were most important and relevant to RCT and its residents. Subsequent sub-questions then focused on supporting Members to access and interpret more localised evidence about context and experiences in RCT. This approach involved some decision points where Members used evidence presented to them to identify specific areas of focus and funnel down from broad national evidence to more local data. Overall, the process meant that RCT HDRC provided Members with multiple different sources of information from across our Evidence Pie, with this providing a basis for them to develop evidence-based and tangible recommendations that could make a difference for residents in RCT.
In practice, this meant that we first conducted a scoping review of academic and grey literature to understand what services had the biggest impact on poverty, the barriers to those services, and what works to increase uptake (RQ1-3). We then reviewed organisational data and population data to better understand what services were currently delivered in RCT, and the uptake of these services (Q4-5). The last two questions (Q6-7) related to the specific barriers to accessing services in RCT, and the opportunities for change locally to make services more welcoming and empowering. Table 1 below provides an overview of the research questions, methods and evidence used.
Table 1: Methods and evidence used for each sub-research question
Overarching Research Question: How can we work with communities to make services more welcoming and empowering for children and families affected by poverty? |
Sub-Research Questions (RQs) | Methods | Evidence |
1. Which services are most important for poverty alleviation? | - Conversations with academic experts
- Scoping review
| - Academic evidence
- Lived experience (from academic evidence)
|
2. What are the barriers to accessing the most important services? | - Conversations with academic experts
- Scoping review
| - Academic evidence
- Lived experience (from academic evidence)
|
3. What works to increase access/uptake for people in poverty? | - Conversations with academic experts
- Scoping review
| - Academic evidence
- Lived experience (from academic evidence)
- Impact measurement data
|
4. Which of the most important services for poverty alleviation are being delivered in RCT? | - Data gathering and analysis
- Conversations with professionals and lived experience representatives
| - Organisational data
- Professional knowledge
|
5. What is the uptake of these services in RCT? | - Data gathering and analysis
- Conversations with professionals
| - Population data
- Organisational data
- Professional knowledge
|
6. What are the barriers to accessing important services for poverty alleviation experienced by low income children and families in RCT? | - Survey
- Workshops with voluntary sector organisations
- Qualitative interviews and focus groups
- Evidence panels
| - Professional knowledge
- Lived experience
|
7. What would work to make the most important services for poverty alleviation more welcoming and empowering? | - Survey
- Workshops with voluntary sector organisations
- Qualitative interviews and focus groups
- Evidence panels
| - Professional knowledge
- Lived experience
|
Read the next section: Review questions 1 and 2: Which services are most important for poverty alleviation and what are the barriers to access?
