The ‘International Policy Perspectives’ series highlights leading international policy institutes and partnerships that are helping governments translate evidence into practical policy and service reform. Through short case studies, it explores how different countries are strengthening evidence-informed policymaking and what lessons these approaches may offer for Australia.

Australians are feeling the cost-of-living ‘crunch’ due to the ongoing impacts of a series of complex, interconnected ‘wicked problems’. The Poverty and Inequality Partnership’s 2025 report found that one in seven adults and one in six children are currently living in poverty in Australia.

In this context, policymakers are increasingly recognising poverty stigma as a barrier to accessing support and engaging with public services. The Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP) defines poverty stigma as the negative stereotyping, social exclusion or unfair treatment of individuals due to their low income levels and interaction with social services.

In Australia, submissions by the South Australian Commissioner for Children and Young People as part of the 2024 Commonwealth inquiry into the extent and nature of poverty in Australia similarly highlighted the impact poverty stigma has on young people’s relationships, wellbeing and experiences with services and the broader community. Reflecting on this issue, the Commissioner noted that many children and young people experiencing disadvantage are “virtually invisible, often demonised and held responsible for their disadvantage”.

These concerns have prompted growing interest in how governments can better understand and respond to the lived experience of poverty. In Wales, the WCPP has developed an approach that combines evidence generation, lived experience and place-based collaboration to inform policy and service reform. Rather than treating lived experience as a one-off consultation exercise, the approach seeks to embed it within ongoing policy learning and implementation practice.

Addressing and challenging poverty stigma

This latest WCPP project, focusing on poverty stigma, builds on earlier work that reviewed international strategies, programs, and interventions on poverty and social exclusion.

The report Poverty and Social Exclusion a Way Forward highlighted stigmatisation as a critical but often overlooked dimension of poverty that can discourage people from accessing public services or other support.

Informed in part by this work, the Welsh Government’s 2024 Child Poverty Strategy included an objective relating to ‘challenging poverty stigma’. However, the review also identified a need for further evidence about effective ways to address the causes and effects of poverty stigma. This led WCPP to develop a broader program of work focused on strengthening the evidence base around poverty stigma and supporting public services in Wales.

Co-designing policy with lived experience

WCPP’s demand-led approach involves working closely with public sector partners to co-identify and respond to evidence needs emerging from policy and practice. Although the initial focus on poverty stigma emerged from WCPP’s earlier research, subsequent scoping work confirmed strong interest in the issue from both local authorities and the Welsh Government.

This scoping involved conducting a nationally-representative survey to establish the scale and nature of poverty stigma in Wales. It found that one in four adults in Wales experience poverty stigma ‘sometimes’, ‘often’ or ‘always’, and low-income households experience poverty stigma ‘always’, ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’, with particular groups (younger people, people with disabilities, renters, and those receiving benefits) more likely to experience poverty stigma.

To help shape the next phase of the project, WCPP held two workshops with policymakers, practitioners, academics and lived experience experts. This informed three connected strands of works:

• The formation of a Poverty Stigma Insights Network (PSIN) coordinated by WCPP. The PSIN has met every two to three months since June 2024 and has participants from across different sectors in Wales and the wider UK. It is intended as a forum to share different forms of evidence about poverty stigma and bring this into dialogue with policy and practice.

• A rapid evidence review of ‘what works to prevent and tackle poverty stigma through public policy and practice’. This review was conducted specifically for the Welsh Government, but the findings have informed poverty stigma work with other partners. WCPP commissioned The Poverty Alliance and the Scottish Poverty and Inequality Research Unit (SPIRU) at Glasgow Caledonian University to conduct this review.

• A place-based project to develop local evidence-based solutions to poverty stigma. WCPP has partnered with Swansea Council and commissioned a research project co-produced with residents in Swansea who have lived experience of poverty. The findings from this research (and the rapid evidence review) were shared in workshops with members of Swansea Council and other local organisations to generate ideas for tackling poverty stigma and develop detailed actions for putting these into practice in Swansea. These ideas will feed into a tackling poverty action plan being developed by Swansea Council.

Poverty stigma is a deeply rooted issue that cuts across different areas of public policy and service delivery, meaning there is no single impact pathway to reduce it. Addressing it requires approaches that connect evidence, lived experience and service delivery over time.

The WCPP model illustrates how intermediary organisations can support this process by combining evidence generation, stakeholder dialogue and place-based collaboration to inform national policy and local implementation.

Insights for Australia

In Australia, there is growing interest in co-design, lived experience engagement and place-based approaches across areas such as poverty reduction, child wellbeing and community services. This is reflected in recent initiatives such as the Commonwealth-supported Partnership for Local Action and Community Empowerment (PLACE) and Victoria’s mental health and wellbeing reform, both of which place greater emphasis on community participation and lived experience in policy and service design. However, many current approaches remain consultation-based or time-limited, rather than embedded within ongoing policy learning and implementation processes.

Through initiatives such as the Poverty Stigma Insights Network and the Swansea partnership, the WCPP approach highlights the role that ongoing engagement can play in raising awareness of poverty stigma among policymakers and public service professionals, and in shaping how services are designed and delivered over time.

More broadly, this case illustrates how lived experience evidence can deepen understanding of complex social policy issues and support more responsive and grounded approaches to policy and service reform.

Lara Bate is an External Affairs Associate at the Australian Public Policy Institute. She is currently completing a Master of International Development at the Geneva Graduate Institute.