Area Assessment of Family Poverty - Summary
The Child Poverty Act (2010) requires Councils to produce local needs assessments of child poverty and agree a local strategy for tackling this. The aim is to eradicate child poverty by 2020.
In Bath and North East Somerset, an assessment was undertaken as a desk exercise, taking into account much recent work on assessing poverty, worklessness and deprivation, including extensive consultation on the Children and Young People’s Plan. A separate, but complementary, piece of work was carried out on the cost of school uniform. Using accepted indicators, a picture emerges of pockets of child poverty in particular wards and lower level super output areas and of the vulnerability of particular groups; households where no parent is working, lone parent households and households where someone is disabled.
As resources contract and the need to target resources where the need is greatest (and where their impact can be greatest), this assessment echoes others in identifying key wards and lower super output areas. Three wards are above the national average for the percentage of children in poverty; Twerton, Southdown and Abbey wards.Two lower level super output areas rank within the lowest 20% in England in terms of child well-being: Whiteway/Southdown and Fox Hill North/Combe Down.
This places child poverty in the same places where overall poverty and deprivation are a known problem. For Bath & North East Somerset, the issue of child poverty cannot be separated from that of their parents, their wider families and their communities, which is why this is an Area Assessment of Family Poverty and why it is essential that tackling poverty is a central part of the refreshed Sustainable Community Strategy (SCS). There is no intention to produce a separate Child Poverty Stategy but rather for poverty to be a central pillar of the SCS. One of the drivers for change in the SCS is inequalities. Each theme describes an approach to tackling the drivers and there is an opportunity to strengthen this in the refresh by highlighting the need to tackle poverty through the inequalities driver.
Family poverty relates directly to a broad range of economic, social and environmental factors which can only be tackled locally by a range of agencies working together. If services and agencies work together to support communities, families and individuals in poverty, then the children in those communities will benefit.
The LSP Executive received the following report in October 2010 and agreed the following:
- The findings of the Area Assessment of Family Poverty are noted.
- That tackling poverty, including family poverty, is placed centrally, as part of the inequalities driver for change in the refreshed Sustainable Community Strategy.
- Theme Sponsors to identify actions within their theme plans to address issues of family poverty and incorporate them into future planning.
Area Assessment of Family Poverty Sept 2010