By Claire Wood, Director at Datesand

Financial wellbeing in the workplace is a necessity. With poor financial health affecting almost one in three employees, it’s crucial that employees feel empowered and supported. By providing this support, you will not only improve your employees’ performance in work but also make a real difference to their quality of life.

Poor financial wellbeing impacts health in terms of poor psychological wellbeing, higher stress and anxiety levels, and lower levels of good health.

As an employer, you can play a key role in helping your people improve their financial wellbeing. Not only will you be helping support your employees, having a financial wellbeing strategy in place can have a wider impact on the business – by reducing absenteeism, boosting employee performance and improving employee retention and acquisition.

Employees who feel financially well are more likely to feel in control of their finances, less distracted by financial worry and more able to focus on their work.

An employer can do many things to help employees with financial wellbeing. The first, and most important is to become a real Living Wage and Living Hours employer – paying fairly based on the real cost of living and providing a guaranteed minimum number of hours. The next thing to do is to carry out a Financial Wellbeing Survey to find out what your employees are struggling to cope with.

You can then look at offering support based on the feedback – such as:

• Partnering with Manchester Credit Union, who provide advice on loans, savings and debt
• Partnering with Wagestream, who can help employees with unexpected costs
• Offering time with an Independent Financial Advisor within the workplace
• Offering crisis loans for emergencies
• Annual leave buy back schemes
• Independent money and debt advice signposting
• Developing a Financial Wellbeing Policy that outlines your commitment to helping improve your employees’ financial wellbeing
• Giving a charity access to one of your meeting rooms free of charge.

As a member of the Good Employment Charter we believe strongly that businesses have a moral obligation to support their people in any way they can, and this support spills out and positively impacts the employee’s families and the communities in which they live and the economy.

If you’re looking at how you can better support your people, start by paying the real Living Wage, signing up as a supporter of the Good Employment Charter and build from there.

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This article is featured in our 10 April newsletter.

GMPA will use the information you provide to send you our GMPA newsletter by email. We may occasionally send you emails about other GMPA projects, services and events to pursue our legitimate organisational activities, but we won’t share your personal information; transfer your data internationally; or use your data for automatic profiling. Your personal data will be stored on a secure, password protected database that can only be accessed by members of the GMPA team. Members of the GMPA team are required to adhere to the organisation’s privacy and data use policy. Your personal data will be stored until you tell us you no longer want to receive our newsletter. You have the right to know what information we hold about you and you can ask to see it, amend it or have it deleted by emailing us at contact@gmpovertyaction.org.

By Amanda Bailey, Director at the North East Child Poverty Commission

The North East of England has enormous strengths and incredible potential – and can be the most fantastic place to grow up and raise a family.

But when a third of children are living in poverty, this is not only limiting the opportunities and outcomes of tens of thousands of young people across the North East, it is holding the whole of our region back.

While we know the UK Government continues to hold the most important levers available to tackle child poverty in England – and a joined-up, national child poverty strategy has never been more needed – we also have a new opportunity in the North East to begin to turn the tide on this fundamental challenge: devolution.

Next month, for the first time, all parts of the North East region will be covered by a mayoral combined authority. Our regional leaders must ensure the benefits of devolution – and any resulting improvements in prosperity – are felt by the children and young people that need this most. This includes doing everything within their power to reduce poverty rates, and levels of inequality, within the North East.

The North East Child Poverty Commission recently published a plan for how this could be done. Based on extensive new data analysis, and a year’s worth of qualitative research across the region, our new report, ‘No time to wait: An ambitious blueprint for tackling child poverty in the North East’, makes the case for using the vehicle of devolution to take a ‘public health approach’ to tackling the structural drivers and impacts of child poverty in, and on, our region.

We set out that this should be convened and driven forward by our mayoral combined authorities (North East and Tees Valley), but a collective effort in which organisations across all sectors – and particularly our anchor institutions – must pull together and play their part.

Our blueprint identified four strategic priorities for action, grounded in the evidence base detailed in our report. Under each of these, we set out several recommendations for organisations in the region – many of which will require the pooling of resources across systems:

• Priority 1: Maximising family incomes now – with our key recommendation being region-wide take-up campaigns and a ramping up of investment in welfare rights and advice in community spaces. New analysis undertaken for us by Policy in Practice estimates the annual value of unclaimed benefits and social tariffs in the North East to be a staggering £1.3 billion – this should be in people’s pockets, and being spent in the local economy.
• Priority 2: Making work a route out of poverty – including by our elected mayors committing to make both combined authority areas Living Wage Places. It is unacceptable that around 16% of employee jobs across the North East are paid below the real Living Wage, and tackling endemic low pay in our region must be a top priority across all sectors.
• Priority 3: The best start in life for the next generation – with our key recommendation being for our combined authorities to pool resources with others – principally our Integrated Care Board – to pilot an expansion of free school meals to all families receiving Universal Credit, which we estimate would benefit 75,000 primary, secondary and college students across the region.
• Overarching priority: Securing a region-wide anti-poverty commitment – to underpin our first three priorities, including through the adoption of the socio-economic duty by organisations across the region; and our elected mayors vocally advocating on the national policies which are exacerbating levels of hardship, such as the two-child limit and debt deductions from Universal Credit.

Devolution provides us with an opportunity to decide what sort of region we want to be. Until we take a collective decision to prioritise poverty prevention and reduction at all levels of government, we will never achieve the economic and social outcomes we all want for the North East.

We look forward to working with whoever is elected next month, to ensure our evidence-based recommendations are adopted at pace. Children growing up in the North East deserve better, and they don’t have time to wait.

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This article is featured in our 10 April newsletter. 

GMPA will use the information you provide to send you our GMPA newsletter by email. We may occasionally send you emails about other GMPA projects, services and events to pursue our legitimate organisational activities, but we won’t share your personal information; transfer your data internationally; or use your data for automatic profiling. Your personal data will be stored on a secure, password protected database that can only be accessed by members of the GMPA team. Members of the GMPA team are required to adhere to the organisation’s privacy and data use policy. Your personal data will be stored until you tell us you no longer want to receive our newsletter. You have the right to know what information we hold about you and you can ask to see it, amend it or have it deleted by emailing us at contact@gmpovertyaction.org.

By Chit Selvarajah, Policy Manager at Independent Age

There are more than 400,000 older private renters in England. But despite numbers increasing by about 50% in the last decade, their stories don’t always feature in the housing debate. At Independent Age we are focused on ensuring that older people in financial hardship live in safe, secure, and suitable housing. As part of this, we want to better understand how the housing crisis affects low-income older renters.

Last year we conducted research with older private renters living in financial insecurity to hear their stories and work out how to improve their housing experiences. The research showed that older private renters are about three times more likely to be in poverty compared to older homeowners – with 37% of them living in income poverty. Many shared with us that they live in cold, damp homes, struggle to pay their rent and live in fear of being evicted from their homes without having done anything wrong.

In 2023 we followed up our initial research with analysis of where older private and social renters live in England. Using census data, we analysed which local authorities have seen the biggest increases and decreases in social and private renters in England over the last decade. Our report No Place for Older Renters found that only two inner London authorities saw an increase in the proportion of older social renters reflecting a national picture of falling rates of older social renters .

It also discovered that the proportion of older people who rent privately is falling in large cities, particularly inner London, and rising in rural and costal areas. Like the rest of England, Greater Manchester shows clear increases in the proportion of older private renters with Bolton seeing a 32% increase in older private renters between 2011 and 2021. But up the coast we see some more dramatic changes; Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde saw some of the biggest increases in older private renters in the country. You can have a look at the data in your area using the interactive maps we developed.

There are many reasons why older people may be concentrating in different areas. Unfortunately, we don’t think this trend is about older people deciding to move to the seaside to live out their retirement. Instead, if we add what older people have told us about rent costs, it seems that older people are being forced to move from their existing communities – for some more expensive areas in cities – to cheaper, deprived areas.

Moving home for any reason can be stressful at any time of life. But for older private renters there can be specific challenges. Moving far away from your community can mean losing the support networks of family and friends that many older people rely on. It can also mean moving away from familiar health and community services, to areas where these services are overstretched and underfunded.

Our work is clear: older people who rent, alongside those from other ages also face the serious consequences of the housing crisis.

At Independent Age, we want to see more support and rights for older people who rent. To make this a reality, we need the UK Government to quickly pass and implement a comprehensive Renters (Reform) Bill to give more people much-needed security. We also want to see the UK Government commit long term to increasing the local housing allowance so that it keeps pace with rising local rents to help stop people feeling like they have no choice but to move. Every person deserves a good home, and older people need it just as much as anyone else.

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This article is featured in our 20 March newsletter. 

GMPA will use the information you provide to send you our GMPA newsletter by email. We may occasionally send you emails about other GMPA projects, services and events to pursue our legitimate organisational activities, but we won’t share your personal information; transfer your data internationally; or use your data for automatic profiling. Your personal data will be stored on a secure, password protected database that can only be accessed by members of the GMPA team. Members of the GMPA team are required to adhere to the organisation’s privacy and data use policy. Your personal data will be stored until you tell us you no longer want to receive our newsletter. You have the right to know what information we hold about you and you can ask to see it, amend it or have it deleted by emailing us at contact@gmpovertyaction.org.

By Scott Compton, Senior Policy Advisor at Action for Children

We are often told that work is the best route out of poverty, but for many of the families we help, this mantra runs into trouble on contact with reality. At Action for Children, we support hundreds of thousands of children, young people and parents through our services each year. Many are struggling on low incomes, while also facing complex barriers to employment.

Last month, we published new research showing how many of the children in poverty live in so-called ‘work-constrained families’. These are low-income families who face significant potential barriers to lifting their incomes through work. Most of these households are already working to some extent – including many who are working full-time but still can’t escape the misery of poverty. Others have challenges that make it harder to take on more hours, like disability, ill-health and caring responsibilities.

We estimate that in 2021/22, there were 2.7 million children in poverty and in work-constrained families. That’s around two-thirds of the 4.2 million children in poverty.

We also looked at the nations and regions of the UK. In the North West, we estimate that of the half a million children growing up in poverty between 2017 and 2022, over 300,000 were in work-constrained families. That’s 65% of poor children in the North West in families with significant potential barriers to work – the joint highest rate in England. One of the barriers we identified in our research is where families are already maximising their hours by working full-time, but still fall below the poverty line. We estimate almost 60,000 children in the North West are experiencing this particularly alarming form of working poverty.

In total across the UK, there are around 300,000 families and over half a million children in poverty despite all parents being in full-time work. We took a deeper dive into some of the key characteristics of these families, identifying several factors likely to be involved in explaining why they’re still in poverty, including low pay and job quality, ethnic background, geographic location, and inescapable costs like housing and disability. Single parents, the self-employed, and Black and minority ethnic parents are significantly over-represented among these families, and almost a quarter work in the health and social work sector (23%). Shockingly, 78% of these parents who are self-employed earn below the minimum wage.

Poverty damages childhoods and impacts children’s life chances. Children who’ve grown up on low incomes do worse at school, earn less as adults, suffer from poorer physical and mental health, and are more likely to need help from a social worker. And this comes at huge cost to society. One estimate put the total cost of child poverty to the economy at £38bn a year in spending on public services and lost economic potential.

To get serious about tackling child poverty and its harms, the next government must take a broad approach. This should have two goals in mind: immediate action to shore up the basic adequacy of the system, and a wider programme of reform aimed at tackling the barriers to work and opportunity that are holding families back.

That means investing in Universal Credit, so families can at least meet their essential needs, and scrapping the benefit cap and two-child limit policies that are the main drivers of high and deepening levels of child poverty.

And it means better policies to support work-constrained families to overcome the barriers they face, so that work offers a more reliable route out of hardship.

Particular attention should be given to how we improve the quality and security of work, including how we build upon paid leave, flexible working, sick pay, reasonable adjustments and childcare. A serious review of how the DWP interacts with claimants and the quality of support they provide is also long overdue.

At Action for Children, we have been working with partners to set out the key issues and some potential solutions, and we will have more to say on this in the months ahead. In this election year, child poverty – and the barriers to escaping it – are critical issues that all political parties must address.

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This article is featured in our 20 March newsletter. 

GMPA will use the information you provide to send you our GMPA newsletter by email. We may occasionally send you emails about other GMPA projects, services and events to pursue our legitimate organisational activities, but we won’t share your personal information; transfer your data internationally; or use your data for automatic profiling. Your personal data will be stored on a secure, password protected database that can only be accessed by members of the GMPA team. Members of the GMPA team are required to adhere to the organisation’s privacy and data use policy. Your personal data will be stored until you tell us you no longer want to receive our newsletter. You have the right to know what information we hold about you and you can ask to see it, amend it or have it deleted by emailing us at contact@gmpovertyaction.org.

GMCVO and Greater Manchester Poverty Action want to hear from organisations that are working in a participatory way with people affected by the economic injustice of poverty.

We have been funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) to conduct an evidence review that collates and themes issues that are repeatedly deemed to be important to address by those directly affected.   

If you have been involved in UK based work between 2008 and 2024 that enabled those affected by poverty to articulate the issues that they face and what they feel are the most important things to invest in, we want to hear from you.  

We are looking for evidence in any format, including but not limited to written reports, that meets the following criteria:  

• Evidence about the problems people in poverty have told you about and the potential solutions or priorities that they have suggested.  
• Evidence that has been co-produced by those affected by poverty.  
• Evidence that resulted from a process that gave people affected by poverty the opportunity to discuss and reflect on their experience and identify their priority issues.  
• Evidence that was produced to achieve positive change for people affected by poverty.   
• We would expect work like this to involve people with a lived experience of poverty throughout all stages of the process including the definition of the problem, the analysis of it and solution development in particular.  

We are interested in work that has taken a non-extractive approach to prioritisation – one that has given enough time to enable a deliberative approach and that has given sufficient time for people to meaningfully reflect in community with others. (We are not interested in surface level survey/focus group responses with the general public).  

If you have evidence that fits these criteria or know about work that does, even if you have not been involved personally, please complete our online form. 

We are also grateful for any ideas of where we might look for such work.

Click here to share your evidence and/or suggest other sources of evidence.

If you would prefer to talk to us about evidence you are aware of you, can request a call via the form above. 

Deadline for submissions is Thursday 18 April 2024.

This evidence review will contribute to a JRF knowledge bank of issues that have been repeatedly prioritised by those directly affected them. This will constitute the first phase of a programme that will seek to act on these priority areas in some way. This is to be further defined at a later stage. JRF want to take steps towards reducing consultation fatigue which contributes to apathy and frustration and compromises engagement in social change activity. Whilst at the same time supporting the democratisation of a wide variety of civil society institutions that affect the lives of people through their work – for example think tanks, campaigning charities, funders, government bodies.  

By Jon Sands, Programme Officer at Greater Manchester Poverty Action

Greater Manchester Poverty Action (GMPA) is working with Action Together and local partners to promote meaningful lived experience engagement in the Oldham Poverty Action Network.

The Oldham Poverty Action Network (OPAN) originated from a range of previous initiatives and organisations to tackle poverty in the borough. OPAN brings together perspectives and insights from key VCSE, public and private sector organisations, along with those with lived experience of poverty, to inform co-ordinated actions.

Oldham is one of six locations across Britain that have access to potential long-term funding from LocalMotion which aims to promote “joined up thinking, pooled resources and long-term collaboration and planning.” So far the network, coordinated by Action Together, has developed pilot projects across three main themes:

• Building out from the cost-of living response
• Hope and aspirations – creating routes out of poverty
• Building a joined-up approach to tackle poverty alleviation and prevention.

While much of OPAN’s work in 2024 will focus on expanding projects and securing the long-term funding, the initial actions already taken have been very positive. These include:

• Taking on an OPAN employee to work in Oldham Jobcentre Plus to help people find suitable voluntary work. Through this, people can gain experience and confidence that may help them into paid employment. Jobcentre staff are also referring people to this service and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are looking at how this may be rolled out elsewhere.
• Taking on two OPAN employees to further develop and expand the Oldham Community Advice Network (OCAN) system. The OCAN system is almost unique to Oldham and allows registered advice organisations to refer a person to other organisations quickly, securely and in a dignified way. This means that once a person is being helped by an OCAN organisation they can be referred onto other organisations without having to repeat their story, which is a key factor that prevents people seeking support.

The network also worked to develop a recruitment process for these roles that helped people not in work to feel confident to apply, and which recognised the value of lived experience, rather than just employment experience, in these roles. This process also included support in creating CVs, completing applications, interview preparation and advice on the impact of part-time work on benefit eligibility. In addition, all documents relating to the role were written in plain language with no jargon, and no unnecessary requirements for the role were included.

Lived experience input has been crucial to the success of OPAN. In recognition of this a peer support group is in place to help lived experience members to gain skills and confidence to participate in OPAN discussions, and to influence other decision-making spaces in Oldham and beyond. This is coordinated by a dedicated person providing one-to-one support to all the lived experience members, as well as facilitating the peer support group. Initially this role was developed by the Shared Health Foundation but GMPA is proud to be providing this support until at least October 2024.

This will be a crucial year for OPAN as the initial short-term projects develop into longer term ones and Action Together will be recruiting shortly for a coordinator to do the work on this. If you would like to know more about GMPA’s role with OPAN, please contact Jon Sands on jons@gmpovertyaction.org.

This article is featured in our 6 March newsletter. To get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up to our mailing list.

By Isabel Taylor, Analysis Manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

In January, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published its annual UK Poverty report. This used the latest data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)’s Household Below Average Income dataset – which is used for the government’s official poverty statistics – and a range of other data sources to set out the most up-to-date picture of poverty in the UK.

The picture is stark. The report shows that 14.4 million people (around 4.2 million children, 8.1 million working-age adults and 2.1 million pensioners) lived in poverty in 2021/2022. Within this, 6 million people (around 1.5 million children, 3.8 million working-age adults and 600,000 pensioners) were living in very deep poverty, on the very lowest incomes. These 6 million people are so far below the poverty line that they would, on average, need to double their income just to move out of poverty.

There has not been a sustained fall in poverty for almost twenty years, when the overall poverty rate fell from 25% in 1996/97 to 20% in 2004/05. Apart from a small drop in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the poverty rate has remained at 21%-22% ever since. By 2021/22, when temporary Coronavirus support schemes started to be withdrawn and average incomes started to increase, poverty in the UK had already returned close to pre-pandemic levels.

These relatively stable levels overall mask deepening poverty in the UK. In 1995/96, around a third (32%) of people in poverty were living in very deep poverty. By 2018/19, this had increased to almost half (47%). Although this fell in the pandemic, it remains much higher (41%) than it had been a quarter of a century ago.

The overall poverty rate also masks the entirely unacceptable levels of poverty experienced by some groups. This includes:

• Children in large, young or single parent families
• Disabled people and informal carers
• Households not in work (though around two-thirds of working-age adults in poverty actually lived in working households)
• People in many minority ethnic households, particularly Bangladeshi and Pakistani households
• Social and private renters
• Households receiving income-related benefits.

This official poverty data only covers the start of the cost-of-living crisis. Since then, JRF’s cost-of-living tracker found that in October 2023, around 2.8 million (47%) of the poorest fifth of households were in arrears with their household bills or behind on scheduled lending repayments, 4.2 million (72%) were going without essentials and 3.4 million (58%) reported not having enough money for food.

There isn’t one single policy choice that will solve this deep level of hardship. We need a serious plan to address the levels, depth and extremes of poverty across the UK. This should include introducing an “Essentials Guarantee” into Universal Credit to ensure that everyone has a protected minimum amount of support to make sure they can afford essentials. But it also requires action to reset our social and economic fundamentals, starting with:

• Helping people find secure jobs and helping people back into work where possible and desirable
• Raising the basic level of workplace rights and protections
• Protecting time for caring around work, while strengthening care services for families to rely on
• Forging a ‘social safety net’ in people’s communities
• Making future pension provision more secure
• Helping people build up modest savings and avoid problem debt
• Expanding access to secure homes.

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This article is featured in our 20 March newsletter. Want to see more articles like this?

GMPA will use the information you provide to send you our GMPA newsletter by email. We may occasionally send you emails about other GMPA projects, services and events to pursue our legitimate organisational activities, but we won’t share your personal information; transfer your data internationally; or use your data for automatic profiling. Your personal data will be stored on a secure, password protected database that can only be accessed by members of the GMPA team. Members of the GMPA team are required to adhere to the organisation’s privacy and data use policy. Your personal data will be stored until you tell us you no longer want to receive our newsletter. You have the right to know what information we hold about you and you can ask to see it, amend it or have it deleted by emailing us at contact@gmpovertyaction.org.

By Lalitha Try, Economist at the Resolution Foundation

The combined impact of the benefit cap and two-child limit are set to push the majority of children in large families into poverty by the end of the decade.

Over the past decade, various approaches have been implemented to try and bring down the benefits bill – from freezing working-age benefits in cash terms to changing the design of Universal Credit and putting caps on how much support families can receive. New Resolution Foundation research has explored the last of these approaches – the benefit cap and two-child limit on support – and their impact on poverty and deprivation.

In 2013, the benefit cap came into effect, limiting the total amount of support that out-of-work families can claim. Four years later the two-child limit, which restricts welfare support to just two children for households both in and out of work, was introduced. The impact of both policies has grown significantly since they were first introduced.

The benefit cap initially only affected only 26,000 families. But successive cash freezes have lowered the real value of the cap by a considerable £14,000 (outside of London), and meant that the number of families that have hit the benefit cap has risen more than four-fold, to 108,000. Within a year of the two-child limit being introduced, 70,000 families were affected. That has now risen to 420,000 families, as more children have been born, and is projected to reach 750,000 families by the time the policy is fully rolled out.

Right now, these benefit-limiting policies affect 500,000 families, with 34,000 families being affected by both. Affected households are suffering substantial income losses – the two-child limit alone amounts to a loss of £3,200 per child. As a result, poverty rates in large families (those with three or more children) are rising.

Ten years ago, 34 per cent of children in large families were in relative poverty. In the latest data, that figure has risen to 43 per cent, and it is set to rise to 51 per cent by 2028-29. That means by the end of the decade the majority of children in large families will be living in poverty.

The policies have also driven a large gap between the lived experiences of small and large families. Three-in-four larger families were in material deprivation in 2021-22, compared to three-in-ten families with less than three children, while 16 per cent of larger families were in food insecurity, compared to only 7 per cent of smaller families.

At the same time as pushing more children into poverty, deprivation and food insecurity, the evidence suggests that these benefit capping policies have not delivered on their stated policy objectives. The two-child limit was introduced to ensure that families in receipt of benefits “face the same financial choices” as households in work – despite the fact that the majority of affected households (six in ten) are already in work. But the rate of births in affected families has only fallen marginally – largely due to the fact that most people don’t know about the policy when their third child is conceived.

When it comes to the benefit cap, the Government’s own review suggests that while it has encouraged more families into work they have still got poorer, and it has not encouraged families to move into lower-cost areas (in part due to the unavailability of affordable housing and the prohibitively high cost of moving).

Given the policies’ failure to improve employment outcomes, and the damage they have already done to the living standards of large families, both policies should be scrapped. Doing so wouldn’t be cheap – costing £3.6 billion a year by the time the two-child limit is fully rolled out. But the prize is huge – 490,000 children would be lifted out of poverty overnight.

Neither of the main parties has announced plans to abolish either policy. But no government can seriously claim to be committed to poverty reduction while these policies are in place. It is time these harmful policies were ended.

This article is featured in our 6 March newsletter. To get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up to our mailing list.

By Rachel Summerscales, Project Officer at Greater Manchester Community Led Homes

In the ever-evolving landscape of housing, the concept of Community Led Housing (CLH) emerges as a beacon of empowerment and sustainability. At its core, CLH embodies the principles of local engagement, ownership, and long-term community benefit. And in Greater Manchester, GM Community Led Homes (GMCLH) stands as a driving force behind this transformative movement.

But what exactly is Community Led Housing? It’s more than just bricks and mortar. It’s about housing that is built or revitalized by local residents, supported by the community, and owned or managed by its members. Importantly, CLH ensures that the benefits to the local community are safeguarded for generations to come.

GMCLH, a member-led hub within Greater Manchester, is dedicated to accelerating the delivery of community-led homes while providing vital support to housing groups. Their mission? To collaboratively build and manage homes with and for communities throughout the region. As an independent not-for-profit Community Benefit Society, GMCLH serves as a hub for advice, resources, and provides and invaluable network for contacts and shared experience.

The support GMCLH provides is exemplified in their recent endeavours in Oldham. When landowners sought to develop a community-led housing project, GMCLH stepped in to facilitate initial community engagement. This effort culminated in the formation of a steering group comprising local housing associations and organisations in dire need of affordable housing solutions.

Among the groups engaged in the co-design process are Support and Action for Women’s Network (SAWN) and Youthouse Housing Co-op. SAWN, a local charity empowering Black African women, recently expanded into housing, aiming to provide a safe and empowering environment. GMCLH’s support ensures that their housing model can be replicated within the Eco Village, offering autonomy and security to its tenants.

Similarly, Youthouse Housing Co-op, comprising young individuals who have experienced homelessness, is designing shared housing to address the unique needs of vulnerable young people in Oldham. By involving care leavers in the codesign process, GMCLH ensures that the resulting homes are not just affordable but also safe and supportive.

GMCLH’s network encompasses diverse housing models, including community self-builds, co-housing initiatives, Community Land Trusts and Shared Ownership scheme. They are also a member of the Social Homes for Manchester campaign, which aims to influence the Manchester Local Plan to include a target of 30% social housing in all developments.

With grant funding from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and collaboration with all ten local authorities, GMCLH is supporting progress in Wigan, Oldham, Manchester and Salford, as well as some initial work in Rochdale. Our vision throughout is to address housing issues at the grassroots level and provide sustainable solutions that truly meet the needs of the community.

To learn more about GMCLH and join the movement towards community-led housing, sign up for their newsletter, follow them on Facebook or Twitter, or attend their monthly forums. Together, we can build a future where housing is not just a commodity but a fundamental right for all.

This article is featured in our 21 February newsletter. To get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up to our mailing list.

By Lizzie Flew, Communications and Campaigns Manager at Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG)

Too many children are growing up in poverty in the UK. The average class of 30 pupils now has nine children living in poverty.

In a new guide from Child Poverty Action Group, Ending Child Poverty: Why and How, Kitty Stewart, Jane Millar, Alan Marsh and Jonathan Bradshaw set out the evidence on the extent of child poverty and its impact on children – their day-to-day lives and their future opportunities.

Poverty means a lack of healthy food and homes that stay cold in winter. If children arrive at school cold and hungry, they are less able to respond to even the best efforts to improve their education. Poverty means parents forgoing essentials while debts increase, creating anxiety and stress which profoundly affects family wellbeing. All these factors impede children’s progress at school and cause their physical and mental health to fall steadily below that of children in better-off families.

But child poverty is not inevitable. It is a political choice. We can stop it, and this guide sets out how. The authors outline how our social security system can help families on low incomes, and explore what we can learn from what other countries have done to tackle child poverty. They then detail the priorities for action: the steps the government must take to help reduce child poverty. The book finishes by imagining a society without child poverty, and the opportunities that would unleash for all our children.

The guide sets out specific action. First, abolish policies that are increasing child poverty, such as the benefit cap and two-child limit. Second, expand measures that will prevent or reduce child poverty, including increasing child benefit and making it universal again, and expanding free school meals. And third, build support for a society with no child poverty, and bring in a comprehensive child poverty strategy to ensure action across all levels of government.

Read the essential guide for anyone concerned about ending child poverty: Ending Child Poverty: Why and How.

This article is featured in our 21 February newsletter. To get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up to our mailing list.