03 April 2008 – Government, councils and businesses to work together to give children a route out of poverty
A new working group bringing together councils and businesses across the capital will help many more children out of poverty, announced London Child Poverty Ministers Beverley Hughes and Stephen Timms today.
The working group, made up of the Greater London Authority, employers, local authorities and other delivery organisations will look to find better ways to work together to cut the number of children who live in poverty.
The ministers made the announcement during a visit to St Stephen’s Children’s Centre in Stockwell. The centre is a good example of how Jobcentre Plus is working with other organisations to help get more parents back to work. Research published today also shows the benefits of Jobcentre Plus advisers working closely with Children’s centres.
Stephen Timms, Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform, said:
“I am personally committed to significantly reducing and eventually eradicating child poverty. We are making progress, with 600,000 children being lifted out of poverty nationally since 1998. However, we need to speed up improvements to the lives of the poorest children in our capital.
“In response, we are introducing a range of measures, targeted specifically at London and aimed at helping more parents find and keep jobs by improving the take up of childcare and other support that is already available.”
Beverley Hughes, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families, said:
“Many parents face practical challenges to entering work and escaping poverty. This is why this Government has increased the support and services available to parents, including substantially improving the quality, availability and affordability of childcare.
“Children’s centres and extended schools not only offer childcare for all families, but also bring together other services – making it easier for families to receive the help they need, including support for parents to enter work. By working together, and supporting parents, these services are helping to achieve our historic goal of ending child poverty.
“Child poverty blights the life chances of too many children in our country. That is why we are determined to end it and stop poverty passing from one generation to the next. Tackling child poverty is in everybody’s interests and needs to be everybody’s business. It is only by working together that we can up the pace of change and meet our historic goal.”
The Ministers will also be calling on employers, local authorities and other interest groups to make a pledge to work together to help tackle child poverty in the capital.
The Government’s commitment to addressing child poverty in London is underlined in a number of new and recent measures to address the issue. These include:
- Setting up of the London Child Poverty Ministerial Working Group which will look at how best to co-ordinate and improve work to maximise opportunities for parents to enter and stay in work, increase the take up of existing childcare, financial or other support to help parents enter work and ensure that all parents have access to flexible work opportunities
- Extending the London Childcare Affordability Pilots to look at new approaches to childcare, especially for additional earners and families with three or more children
- Piloting a scheme to provide extra incentives for parents in London to return to work, building on lessons learned from ongoing pilots.
These initiatives are part of a £125 million programme of research and pilots between 2008 and 2010 which will develop new and innovative approaches to tackling child poverty across the UK. They are included in “Ending child poverty: Everybody’s business” document that was published last month and will be funded through the £950 million extra investment in the Budget 2008 to tackle child poverty.
Notes to Editor
1. Details of the existing Childcare Affordability Project
The Childcare Affordability Programme subsidises childcare places in London run by the DCSF, the London Development Agency (LDA) and the Greater London Authority (GLA). The target is for 10,000 affordable and flexible childcare places to be available.
Three main types of places are currently available:
- Full day care places subsidised by up to £30 per week for lower income families who pay more for their childcare than the Working Tax Credit limit of £175 a week
- Flexible places - funding for providers up to £68 per place per week if they make their provision more flexible
- Free childcare for parents wanting to move into employment or training.
2. The Jobcentre Plus and Children’s Centres research report can be found at: research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rrs-index.asp
3. Poverty Unit was formed in October 2007 to ensure that there is a clear cross Government approach to tackling child poverty. The Unit brings together the expertise of officials from DWP and DCSF and will work closely with HMT and our key stakeholders to drive forward the child poverty agenda and progress towards the target to halve child poverty by 2010, on the way to eradicating it by 2020.
4. DWP’s headline child poverty measure is the proportion of children living in households with income which is less than 60 per cent of the median. A child is currently defined as an individual aged under 16, or an unmarried 16 to 18 year old in full-time education.
5. The number of children in poverty using DWP’s headline measure has fallen by 600,000 since 1998/99, from 3.4 million to 2.8 million in 2005/06, the latest year for which figures are available. Over this time a child’s risk of being in poverty has fallen from 26 per cent to 22 per cent.
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