Renfrewshire Council will be the first Scottish council to set up a fund to help parents living in austerity.

The £280,000 cash pot will help parents meet costs like school trips and activities, and forms part of a proposed schools package that will also pump an extra £1.16m into the area’s literacy resources to cut the attainment gap.

As part of Renfrewshire’s £6m child poverty fighting fund — that was unanimously approved — the council will launch a £410,000 task team of job experts to forge lasting links between pupils and the world of work and training, and will also initiate work that could reform outdated childcare arrangements.

The childcare boost will invest £50,000 into a new childcare task force and £50,000 to offer immediate help to parents who need childcare to get to job interviews and training, as part of a two-pronged bid to stop traditional childcare being a barrier to parents moving into work.

The funding allocation comes months after the ground-breaking Renfrewshire Tackling Poverty Commission findings and recommendations were backed by Renfrewshire Council.

Councillor Mark Macmillan, Renfrewshire Council leader, said: “The Poverty Commission told us that the cost of the school day has a major impact on families who live below the breadline and I want to put a safety net in place to offer them immediate help with costs like materials, trips and other activities.

“More than half of our £6m poverty fund — £3.3million — will deliver a unique schools package to improve early years and close the attainment gap between high and low income households. Let me be absolutely clear – I want all of Renfrewshire’s children to have the same opportunities, and this allocation will see us step up investment in every stage of school.

“We’ll target support to high school pupils to develop our young workforce and make sure young people who live in poverty are supported and resilient. This will be done through a new, pioneering task force to make sure pupils can have a direct link into work and training, and will be backed up by a £400,000 youth mental health programmes in our high schools.

“We’ll also step up Renfrewshire’s literacy approach in our primary schools and bring it into line with the needs of local children. £1.16m will be pumped into improving reading, writing and parental involvement and will boost primacy school resources to make sure children from low-income households are given more intensive support and intervention to stop them falling behind.

“The Commission also told us that childcare hasn’t kept pace with changing work patterns or issues like zero-hours contracts and the fact it’s now a barrier to work and training is completely unacceptable. Families with children are the biggest group living in poverty, but are often unable to take on work due to inflexible and expensive childcare — so I welcome our £100,000 childcare investment that will offer immediate support and initiate detailed work to consider local childcare reforms.” The £6m package will target a range of areas in a bid to lift families out of hardship including transport, jobs, training, youth mental health, schools, housing, family support, regeneration and fuel and food poverty. As part of the package, a £3.3million allocation into improving early years and closing the attainment gap has also been approved. This includes roll-out of the council’s successful Families First support programme to and Johnstone, Gallowhill and Foxbar, and £1.16m for a new literacy programme to step up efforts to close the attainment gap.

The education package also includes £280,000 to address the cost of the school day and £410,000 for a new task force of experts to help pupils build links with the world of work and training.

Cllr Macmillan added: “Allocation of our £6m poverty fund marks a unique and bold approach to tackling inequality at a local level. It will invest in a far-reaching package of new interventions and will expand successful and proven approaches, as we work to make sure tackling poverty is central to everything we do.”