Best Start Foods campaign handed Commercial Partnership Award

Social Security Scotland was honoured at a ceremony to recognise the best of the country’s public sector.

We were named as winners in the Scottish Public Sector Awards held at the Scottish Parliament.

The win came in the Commercial Partnerships category, recognising our work with retailers to promote the Best Start Foods payment in supermarkets and shops.

This has included the payment being publicised on millions of Iceland milk cartons and fruit bags and via field stalls in Asda branches across Scotland. Asda promoted Best Start Foods on in-store radio as they hosted our teams.

We also worked with Scotmid and Co-op who promoted Best Start Foods on in-store posters and via their social media channels.

Chief Executive David Wallace was presented with the award by Kenneth Gibson MSP at the event, organised by Holyrood magazine.

David said after the event:

“A key focus for us is making sure that people know about the benefits that we deliver and that they are encouraged to apply and get the money that they are entitled to. We are still a young organisation and we are keen to try new and different ways to do this and we know we don’t need to do this alone. We are very grateful to the public and third sector who have made a significant contribution to getting information on benefits out there.

“This work was the start of looking for ways in which we can work with the private sector to do this too. I’d like to thank our retail partners for this support. They have shared our passion for helping people, particularly as our shared clients and customers face a cost of living crisis.

“We are extremely honoured to be recognised for this work."

Brendan McGinty, External Communications Manager worked on the project.

He said: “Our campaign has highlighted that there are ways in which private and public sectors can work together for the benefit of clients and customers.

“This is something we started to explore at the start of the year and found that the doors were very much open to us from some of the country’s biggest supermarkets. It was great that we had a local delivery service available to support this work and it shows the value of having staff based in communities across Scotland.

“The more we do the more interest there seems to be from within that sector and there’s more in the pipeline for the year ahead. We are also considering what other private sector partners could support us and we would love to hear from any organisations who think they could help us promote benefits.”

Social Security Scotland was also nominated in the Campbell Christie Public Sector Reform Award, which we won last year.