Government Office North East

A regional child poverty strategy

The Government’s target to eradicate child poverty and the new Child Poverty PSA provide the policy imperative for a child poverty strategy for the North East, which currently has the worst child poverty figures outside of London.

An initial data scoping exercise carried out in Autumn 2006 was presented at a seminar with North East District Councils. This scoped the extent and location of child poverty and led to the establishment of a project to tackle the issues in the North East and to involve all key stakeholders.

A regional high level, cross-agency Strategy Group was organized and their research on issues to be taken forward was presented at a larger seminar in June 2007 introduced by Hilary Armstrong, MP (Social Exclusion Unit). Priorities were established and initial workstreams set up as result (see below for further details). A project management group, comprising staff from Government Office North East and One North East, was also established to co-ordinate the workstream activities.

In February 2008, GONE will host a region-wide session featuring the Child Poverty Tool Kit developed by Inclusion and CPAG. From April 2008, a programme of targeted activity will begin. The goal is to show a demonstrable reduction in child poverty via the activities that stem from four workstreams:

Economic development.

This strand focuses on how to address child poverty by tackling worklessness amongst parents and providing future employment opportunities for today’s children and young people. This will include a review of the Regional Economic Strategy 2006-11 Action Plan to consider how action to tackle child poverty might be incorporated. We will also consider how the Local Area Agreements might be a vehicle for taking forward action on the economic development aspects of LAAs. As LAAs are also relevant to the other workstreams, this will be considered a cross-cutting action.

More specifically, the economic development workstream will focus on the following issues:

Increasing employment amongst parents (possible focus on 16-25 year olds)
Families in which only one parent works and is in a low wage job – promoting their ability to secure better paid jobs, for both parents to work, and support to keep them in work
Helping parents for whom self-employment may be an option
The impact of regeneration on the economic development of disadvantaged communities in the region
Identifying and assessing the possible barriers to parental employment and how they can be addressed, : eg with childcare, transport, housing and confidence-building
The role of money management and financial inclusion in making work pay
Identify existing projects relevant to child poverty and assess their impact or explore the potential for sharing best practice
Consider scope for new demonstrator projects and how these might be taken forward, with suitable performance assessment
Assess the roles of national and local agencies in the region in addressing the causes of child poverty

Social development.

The following policy areas have been identified as key in terms of their potential impact on child poverty in the North East:

Prevention/early intervention – parenting
Prevention/early intervention – early years
Raising aspirations
Community and social capital development programmes

This workstream will carry out a scoping exercise of policies and research relevant to these themes, considering the impact of specific delivery programmes on children, young people, families and communities and seeking examples of practice with the potential for wider application:

Parenting – prevention/early intervention.

This work will scope recent research on parenting and poverty and focus on the content of the recently published Every Parent Matters, considering issues of impact and initiatives or projects which have the potential to break the cycle of underachievement and poverty.

Early years – prevention/ early intervention.

Three seminars will be hosted by Together for Children and Jobcentre Plus and supported by Government Office on “Child Poverty and the Children’s Centre role.” These seminars will consider the impact of recent welfare to work policy developments.

Raising aspirations.

This will have a focus on the role of education in tackling poverty. Consideration will be given to working with young people to seek their ideas of what would make a difference in raising aspirations to achieve. The model being piloted in Tyne and Wear on Activity Agreement pilots could have wider application.

Community development and social capital.

Barnardos are shortly to publish their report on Building Social Capital based on work carried out in Sunderland. Their model of engaging communities in measuring social capital could be explored for its impact on child poverty and possible wider application.

Public perception / awareness

The following areas were identified at the regional Child Poverty seminar in June 2007 as key in terms of their potential impact on child poverty in the North East:

Raising public awareness
Perceptions of what poverty is, where it is and how much it costs
Negative attitudes towards young people
Empowering children to be part of their communities
Language issues – connotations of ‘poverty’

In relation to these areas the workstream group will develop a campaign to raise the awareness of child poverty issues in the North East, raising profile in public bodies to make child poverty a priority in local decision making and target setting:

establish what the public perception of child poverty in the region is
identify ways in which to raise public awareness of child poverty in the region and address the negative attitudes towards young people
work with partners to tackle the language issues around the current connotations of ‘poverty’
identify how, at a national and regional level, we are empowering children to be a part of their communities and how successful these attempts have been
engage with key regional leaders to identify their perceptions of what leads to and sustains child poverty and what needs to be done differently (links with social development workstream)
engage with key groups of young people in the region to identify their perceptions of child poverty and what needs to be done differently (links with social development workstream)

Data analysis.

Data analysis will continually support the activity of the Child Poverty Steering Group by:

identifying the various sources that can be used to gather information on child poverty in the region
commissioning research and developing recommendations on a data-gathering protocol for collecting and analyzing child poverty statistics for the region
establishing baselines to measure regional progress on reducing child poverty
using data analysis to inform the activities in individual workstreams
informing best practice examples with the other workstreams and creating a coherent, single strategy for the region

The workstream groups will prepare recommendations for the Strategy steering group on actions that can be taken in the short/medium/long term to tackle child poverty in the region, and identify and share best practice to create a coherent, single strategy for the region.

This will centre on the production of a ‘State of the Region’s Children’ report to be commissioned during this first preparatory phase.