Following a major event on tackling poverty through human rights in December 2015, work in this area was taken forward by a reference group of people with lived experience of poverty who came together to act as a reference group on the right to an adequate standard of living. The group was supported by the Scottish Human Rights Commission. The group’s collective experiences included (but was not limited to):

• Disability and poverty.
• Mental health and poverty.
• Unpaid caring and poverty.
• Homelessness.
• In-work poverty.
• Rural poverty.
• Poverty of opportunity.
• Food poverty.
• Fuel poverty.

In October 2016, the Adequate Standard of Living Reference Group responded to the Scottish Government’s Consultation on A New Future for Social Security.

In September 2018. the Reference Group submitted evidence to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, Professor Philip Alston, in advance of his visit to the UK in November 2018.

Case studies and a film were produced showing human rights in practice in relation to poverty and housing.

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