One in three children in the UK and one in four Scottish children live in poverty. Those in lone-parent families face even worse levels of poverty, affecting their health and wellbeing and life prospects. We know that this kind of injustice starts upstream of families seeking support, and that all too often, the systems designed to support families are actually working against them.
In 2026, Collaborate has been working with Fife Gingerbread, who have been supporting families facing poverty and trauma in Fife since 1987. Around 850 families connect with them every year. As the organisation has found itself responding to seemingly ever increasing need and demand, they developed a new organisational strategy, leading to the development of an Influence & Change team with an aspiration to embed a prevention-focused ‘upstream mindset’ across the board, staff, volunteers and parents. This work has evolved organically, leading to exciting new test and demonstration projects and national partnerships.
Collaborate has helped the Fife Gingerbread team develop a tool to illustrate the ‘upstream mindset’ they use and bridge between their strategy and day-to-day – not just having the intention to reflect on the root causes of issues but really doing it, and acting on the insight that comes from reflecting. It details their preventative approach to whole family support and articulates their commitment to supporting families in crisis and growing their resilience as well as developing and testing longer term strategies to tackle systemic challenges. The final output provides a framework, rather than a model specific to Fife Gingerbread, that we hope is transferable and inspires others.
Fife Gingerbread already recognises and engages with systems that trap families in poverty, including education, work and housing – exemplified, for example, in their work to test and demonstrate the creation of fair, supportive and flexible workplaces for lone parents. The Lone Parent Positive Workplaces Project is a Scotland-wide partnership led by Fife Gingerbread involving One Parent Families Scotland (OPFS) and Strathclyde Business School, reflecting that systemic change is only possible through partnership.
The Upstream Mindset Framework exemplifies how Fife Gingerbread have already been grappling with the complexity of making an impact on child poverty and influencing better outcomes for families, and seeks to engage others in joining a movement around prevention. There is strong consensus that preventative action is needed across healthcare and wider public services. It’s a matter of making the change; redesigning services, organisations and projects to focus on systems change is challenging and requires courageous leadership.
Collaborate’s support to develop the framework built on our experience with helping organisations understand and develop collaborative approaches to making progress on complex, place-based, systemic challenges. We worked with the Fife Gingerbread team to define the characteristics of an upstream mindset, develop the framework elements and plan implementation to embed it organisationally and with partners.
Core to the framework are five phases for identifying and understanding underlying problems, building relationships, taking action in the spirit of experimentation and adaptation, and continuing to revisit the phases ongoingly (keep observing, collaborating and acting). Threaded through the five phases are two key principles: participation that rebalances power and learning through practice at each step.
We heard from Fife Gingerbread colleagues that working in this sector means coming up against burnout and discouragement from continually providing support while people stay in need of services. Sometimes it feels like putting out fires, treading water or putting plasters on. But the culture at Fife Gingerbread encourages bringing your natural curiosity, exercising autonomy, generating ideas for tackling issues at their root and drawing on the strengths and perspectives of others to implement them and be part of the solution. It’s these very qualities of trust and collaboration that the wider system needs in order to enact an upstream, preventative mindset and secure a better future.