Stepping Stones: Mapping Report, 2023

In 2019, the University of Edinburgh completed a data mapping for Stepping Stones, a voluntary organisation that provides support services to young parent families and pregnant women living in North Edinburgh. Their overall aim is to promote and support the social development and education of families with young children. The data mapping provided the organisation with an overview of the key socio-economic and demographic trends in their locality, and evidence on the level and nature of possible needs. The exercise examined a range of data, largely taken from publicly available national datasets (for example, the Census or Acel (Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence)). Additionally, administrative data from other local services and FOI requests were collected. The mapping exercise was used internally by Stepping Stones to inform and support funding applications and dialogue with partners.

The 2019 data mapping reported the cumulative and sustained impact of poverty in its different forms. These include interconnected structural (i.e. housing), policy (welfare and employment) and socio-cultural processes (breastfeeding, healthy weight, crime). Not only did the data point towards an ongoing need for family support services in the locality, but illuminated the social and economic conditions within which Stepping Stones operates, and the families that they work with live.

Now in 2023, Stepping Stones has commissioned an update to the data mapping. As before, this will establish a current profile of the locality, and determine the extent of continuity or change across a range of domains. The timing of this work is significant. Wider social and economic factors, including the recession, austerity measures, COVID-19 and the ongoing cost of living crisis have severely affected Scottish society. Evidence shows that those who already have fragile incomes and family circumstances, especially single parent families, are those most adversely affected. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that 7 million low income households in the UK are going without at least one essential (such as a warm home, enough food, appropriate clothing or basic toiletries), while over 2 million families are neither eating properly nor heating their home adequately . Current estimates suggest that more than 1 in 4 children in the UK now live in poverty . Experiences of poverty have a potent effect on children’s lives in there here and now. But these are also inequalities that shape children’s lifecourse, the choices and chances that they have, and the opportunities of generations that follow them . This new report examines a range of datasets to examine whether the disadvantages observed in 2019 have become more, or less, entrenched.

This report will show that the area has historically experienced complex and intergenerational disadvantage, the effect of which have has accumulated over many decades, and continues to shape family life. In this context, Stepping Stones, and their partners, continue to offer a critical lifeline to many families.