COMMISSION DRAWS UP MEASURES IN A BID TO TACKLE CHILD POVERTY

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Councillor Rory Palmer, Deputy City Mayor & Chair of Leicester Child Poverty Commission

Commission draws up measures in a bid to tackle child poverty

About 160 politicians, business leaders and charity bosses met yesterday to discuss ways of tackling child poverty in LeicesterThe Leicester Child Poverty Commission held its second annual conference at St Martin's House, near the cathedral.

According to Government figures, 30,000 children in the city are classed as living in poverty and the commission has drawn up 66 measures it hopes will help struggling families.

Commission chairman and deputy mayor of Leicester, councillor Rory Palmer, said: "We have made some important progress but a lot has happened in the past 12 months.

"The impact of the Government's welfare reforms is now being felt by some of the less well-off people in society. The employment situation remains challenging.

"However, we have made some important progress by implementing some of the measures set out."

Coun Palmer said the council had agreed to give its lowest paid staff the so-called Living Wage of £7.45 an hour for adults, rather than the minimum legal rate of £6.19.

He also said the council was getting on with signing up all nursery-aged children as library members to boost their educational chances, promoting credit unions over loan sharks or payday lenders and helping to co-ordinate the city's 15 food banks.

Coun Palmer added: "We are not complacent. We know there is a lot of very hard work still to do and things are going to remain difficult before they get better.

"There are a huge number of people who are hovering just above the poverty line as well."

The Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Rev Tim Stevens, Catherine Stretton, head teacher of Marriott Primary School on the Saffron Lane estate, and Leicester South MP Jon Ashworth were among the speakers.

Coun Palmer said he would speak to his colleagues about whether to hold a third conference next year.

LEICESTER CHILD POVERTY COMMISSION CONFERENCE

This morning I'm at St Martins House, Peacock Lane, where the Leicester Child Poverty Commission conference is taking place in the Grand Hall. I'm glad to see Cllr Manjula Sood, Assistant Mayor with portfolio for Community Involvment, Partnerships and Equalities (and Chair of Leicester Council of Faiths) here today.

This is the second annual event on this topic. The first was held on 25 May 2012 at De Montfort University and was reported in the Leicester Mercury.

Today's conference is opened by Rachel Dickinson (Strategic Director, Children, Leicester City Council) opens the meeting - and chairs the rest of the day.

Cllr Rory Palmer (Deputy City Mayor and Chair of Leicester Child Poverty Commission) welcomes delegates. Here are a few extracts from his letter of welcome included in our packs:

Since last year's conference the Leicester Child Poverty Commission has published 66 recommendations, a number of which have been implemented. Significant work is taking place across the public, private and voluntary sectors to make progress in implementing all of the recommendations. The Commission has continued work with partners to raise awareness of child poverty in the city, to develop new thinking on how to address this challenge and how to monitor the impact of public spending cuts, welfare changes and falling household budgets. Amongst other activities the Commission make a formal response to the Government's consultation on how child poverty should be measured, we held a meeting with businesses and employers to talk about the economic impact of pverty and thge role of the private sector in tackling poverty, and we have worked to ensure child poverty is an issue discussed by other key organisations like the new Health & Wellbeing Board.

The Rt Revd Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester, gives the keynote address. I am always impressed by what Bishop Tim has to say on the subject of poverty. He gave the keynote address at the 2012 Annual General Meeting of Leicester Council of Faiths, with the title, "The Recession and its Effects on Inter-Faith Relations". He has been in print on the topic many times and put in a memorable appearance on BBC2's Newsnight in January 2012 where he more than held his own in the face of a rigorous interrogation by Jeremy Paxman about opposition from the Bishops in the House of Lords to the Welfare Reform Bill.

After Bishop Tim's keynote address, we move on to workshop discussion. We're asked to consider the role of communities and organisations in combating child poverty, facilitated by Voluntary Action LeicesterShire. There are two questions to help focus our discussions:

• What practical things can you do to support the recommendations of the Child Poverty Commission?
• What do you need the Child Poverty Commission to do to help you achieve these things?

Themes have been allocated to different groups of tables:

• Early years (five tables)
• Income, personal finance & housing (four tables)
• Health & wellbeing (three tables)
• Economy, work & transport (three tables)
• Policy & governance (two tables)

Our table, at the back of the hall, is shown on the diagram, but it doesn't have a theme allocated to it. I guess ours would be "latecomers" or "nearest the coffee". We're allowed to pick our own theme, so we go for "Early years". I do half an hour on this one (during which we're joined by Dr Katherine Duffy, one of the 11 members of the Leicester Child Poverty Commission). For the second part of this session I move to another table to discuss "Income, personal finance and housing". Then coffee, I'm glad to say.

The workshops prompt a couple more questions that will fit in the Resilience Audit I'll be conducting with places of worship and faith-based community centres in Leicester over the next few months on behalf of the Council of Faiths.

After the break there's a panel on stage, discussing issues surrounding child poverty from their own areas of interest and positive examples of actions taken so far.

• John Willets (Project Director, FareShare Leicester)
• Imran Hussain (Head of Policy, Rights and Advocacy at Child Poverty Action Group)
• Jon Ashworth MP (Labour, Leicester South)
• Catherine Stretton, Head Teacher, Marriot School

Each has the opportunity to speak briefly, then respond to questions from the floor.  This fills an hour of the programme.

Sir Peter Soulsby, Mayor of Leicester, makes the closing remarks. I managed to write down a few of the things he said, from a short speech that was both rousing and reflective: "Poverty affects many people in this city in ways which many other people in this city find repulsive. [...] it has sometimes been said that communities in Leicester lead parallel lives - this is true, but not along ethnic, racial or religious lines; in more practical, meaningful terms, this is determined by differing levels of income." If I was able to transcribe faster, I'd have written down more.

Today we heard about a recent study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that the number of children living in poverty would increase by 50% by 2020. I searched for this online and found an article in the London Evening Standard (7 May 2013) part of which I quote below:

More than one million more children will fall into poverty in the UK by the end of the decade, new research has predicted.

The assessment by the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the projected increase from 2010/11 to 2020/21 will reverse the reductions in child poverty rates witnessed in the previous decade.

As I leave the conference, I reflect on what has more power to change things. You can have all the money in the world, but if you don't have the will, the desire to make a difference, what good can it do. Now that the money that we were all getting used to being available is being taken off the table, we have to fall back on the power of that will and desire. And to judge by what I have heard today, there's plenty of that on tap.

CONFERENCE FOCUSES ON NEED TO TACKLE RISE IN CHILD POVERTY

This article is published in today's Leicester Mercury:

Conference focuses on the need to tackle rise in child poverty

Business leaders, charity bosses and politicians have met to discuss ways of tackling Leicester's growing child poverty rates.

De Montfort University hosted the city's first Child Poverty Conference on Friday, which was attended by more than 200 delegates from across the country.

It was hosted by the Leicester Child Poverty Commission, which will launch a city-wide action plan on child poverty later this summer.

Deputy city mayor Rory Palmer said: "At the last count, there were about 27,000 children living in poverty and that number is probably closer to 30,000 now. It's something we urgently need to address.

"As a city council there are things we can do, such as ensure people are on the right energy tariffs and not paying too much on their bills.

"We can make sure children entitled to free school dinners are getting them, not paying when they should not be, and we can work with businesses to get them to increase wage levels.

"We had many constructive ideas which will help us put together an action plan."

Alison Garnham, chief executive of the national Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) said: "We are very glad to be involved and we hope not just to bring our expertise to the table, but also to learn more ourselves as we help develop new ideas and good practice that can spread to other communities."

Not trying to hitch our wagon to someone else's star, but the Council of Faiths was asked to ensure that representatives of the city's diverse faith communities would be in attendance at this event. Several of our Board Members were able to attend, including our Chair, Assistant Mayor Cllr Manjula Sood, who holds the Cabinet portfolio for Adult Health and Social Care. This conference took place on Friday 25 May - a busy day for us, as the Council of Faiths was also represented at Time to Shine at Leicester Racecourse and at the launch of the Memory Cafe at Eyres Monsell Community Centre.