Conference Agenda

This paper outlines findings from a multi-method evaluation and service design study of the pilot phase of the Financial Inclusion Support Officers (FISO) in schools programme. Starting in February 2020, the FISO programme was piloted over the course of 12-months in four secondary schools in Glasgow to explore how to effectively embed financial inclusion support in schools. The idea of providing financial inclusion support via schools emerged from conversations Glasgow City Council staff had in early 2019 with parents and multi-agency community groups in poorer neighbourhoods, most notably with the Calton Child Poverty Network, a community organisation in one of the most deprived areas in the city.

The study explored how the process of providing financial inclusion support in schools is seen through three lenses: Those of the schools, including head teachers and other teaching staff involved, those of the financial inclusion advisors and, those of the users of the service. It also unpacked and evaluated the service delivery process, particularly how parents were identified or identified themselves as potential beneficiaries, how the referral system within the four pilot school operated, how the process of providing the support is managed and, how feedback and documented insights from the different parties involved in the process informed the evolving service development. Furthermore, the study examined the outcomes, not only in terms of financial gains but also looking to measures of stability, resilience and self-sufficiency.

The key insights, themes and learning points that emerged from the pilot study are clustered in five categories:

• Learning through the service’s implementation including that the decision to take the service to parents and young people through schools has had a notable impact in terms of its core objectives around financial gains (£715,757.84) and debts managed (£41,140.47) during the pilot phase; and that financial inclusion issues cannot be tackled without also taking account of intersecting challenges at risk families face in terms of housing, social isolation, mental health, digital exclusion etc.
• Learning through a collaborative evaluation of the service including the central importance of relationships and of building trust at every level and interface of the service.
• Opportunities and considerations for ongoing service development including how the level of excellence in service delivery that was provided during the pilot can become the standard for all agencies who work on the service and how the ecosystem of partners that developed around the third sector financial inclusion agency – including the Council, schools and referral partners – can be expanded and strengthened.
• Questions and themes that emerged from the collaborative evaluation, notably that to engage citizens more effectively, further learning is required about the logic and vocabulary they use to articulate and make sense of challenges they face, as well as what other trusted spaces in addition to schools they may already be engaged with.
• Potential future steps and a set of recommendations that were formulated based on insights from the evaluation and broader conversations with the commissioning team in the Council.

The evaluation and service design study presented in this paper presents a first phase of ongoing work that focuses on the programme’s expansion to the rest of the secondary estate as well as the primary estate in Glasgow. The study of the pilot phase evidenced the service's initial impact and potential, and informed decisionmaking about, and funding for, expanding FISO to the secondary and primary estates. The research and delivery team have also been approached by other local authorities in Scotland and the UK to learn more about the service and the insights that are emerging from the implementation process on an ongoing basis.

The Funds of Knowledge approach, which originated at the University of Arizona (USA) with the help of anthropologists and researchers in the field of education, took place from the need to address a deficit model that was being forged in schools, under the slogan of the supposed cultural and social deficiency of students from underrepresented families or from low economic strata.

In this context, Vélez-Ibáñez and Greenberg (1992) proposed that all families, regardless of their economic, linguistic and cultural status, have skills and knowledge that stem from their survival strategies in adverse scenarios (González et al., 2005). However, such intellectual resources are invisible, even denied, in school practice due to the existence of asymmetrical power relations between different social groups: "Public schools often ignore the cultural and strategic resources available to students' homes, which we have called Funds of Knowledge" (Vélez-Ibáñez and Greenberg, 1992, p. 314).

The strength of this approach lies in the possibility of giving a voice to families, through the establishment of mutual trust relationships between them and the educational centers. It is a matter of establishing bridges for the co-creation of knowledge and learning strategies for students in a society that is increasingly aware of the irrationality of wanting to homogenize school practices in increasingly diverse and complex classrooms (Santos Rego et al., 2022).

In recent times, terms such as 'Funds of Identity' (Esteban-Guitart, 2016), have emerged to broaden the perspective of the Funds of Knowledge to the students' own life experiences, thus giving them greater prominence. And in a scenario in which more and more importance is given to inclusive education, the role of the community also appears as a strategic resource to enhance students' Funds of Knowledge.

From our perspective, the community, in addition to being a learning asset compatible with family and school, also implies an 'extra' support for those students whose family and/or personal background may be more problematic. Researchers such as Zipin (2009) and Hogg (2011), among others, studied the complexities of entering into the personal and family life experiences of students with a past characterized by domestic violence, delinquency, or bullying situations, among others. Thus, the so-called 'Dark Funds of Knowledge' emerged, which, for some researchers, meant reliving the trauma without being able to make a significant contribution to the students' learning situations, and for others, it was presented as an opportunity to turn all those negative experiences into claims linked to social justice, and even to develop resilience practices as support for other young people who were going through similar situations.

The main objective of this proposal is to describe an experience that had as its theoretical basis the potential of this approach in disadvantaged contexts, adjusting it to a very specific reality. It is about a group of Roma families, regular participants in initiatives developed by the Fundación Secretariado Gitano in Pontevedra (Galicia-Spain). Our intention was to improve the relations of these families with their children's schools, taking advantage of the benefits of collaborative work between the groups involved, and, in short, favoring greater visibility and recognition of the Romany population in the school curriculum.