Good Jobs
- Community Wealth Building
Helping People in Poverty
- Child Poverty Prevention Programme
- Poverty Truth Commission
- Food Poverty Programme
Helping people into secure, well-paid jobs is the best route to getting grid of poverty. I’m doing that through creatingmore good jobs and investing in people through our skills programmes. The issues are so acute however that I also want to help directly the people experiencing poverty right now.
During the pandemic digital exclusion quickly became a serious issue. Many people found themselves excluded due to the cost of internet access and computer equipment. We reacted quickly to get over 2500 laptops out to individuals and families.
Our child poverty prevention programme works across 3 areas:
- Working across 90 schools to help them make life easier to struggling families. This includes reviewing school uniform policy, after schools clubs, family learning and bespoke support. School uniforms tend to have logos andcan cost in the region of £200. We work with schools to change this so more affordable alternatives are available.
- Welfare rights advice at the school gate provides easy access to guidance for families. This advice already exists but it’s often difficult to access for busy parents and guardians. By locating it in schools it make it a lot easier to access so people can get the right support.
- Working with employers to help them support their employees that are experiencing financial insecurity.
Our Poverty Truth Commission was launched in October 2022. It empowers direct citizen engagement in decision-making. They bring people with real or ‘lived experience’ of poverty together with decision-makers and other influential leaders from the public and private sector and wider civil society. The process has at its core fifteen commissioners, people with lived experience of poverty. They focus on food poverty, caring responsibilities and health with the aim of coming up with practical interventions which will make a difference to the lives of people struggling on a low income.
We are also developing a programme of work to address food poverty. This will be co-designed with people in the know like the West End Food Bank, The Trussell Trust and FareShare North East. More to report on soon!
