A new three-year plan sets out how Plymouth City Council will work to break the cycle of child poverty and ensure that children living in the city are given the opportunity to achieve their full potential.
The Child Poverty Action Plan for 2022 to 2025 was agreed at today’s Cabinet meeting following support from the cross-party Child Poverty Cabinet Advisory Group. The plan has four key themes:
- Income and employment: ensuring the benefits of economic growth are felt be everyone and supporting the Skills for Plymouth plan.
- Health and wellbeing: supporting children’s emotional and physical wellbeing and continuing the oral health improvement programme.
- Education and transitions: improving literacy levels, supporting children in Early Years settings to be ‘school ready’ and giving young people the skills to transition into adulthood.
- Partnerships: working with private and voluntary sector partners to mitigate child poverty.
Each theme includes a number of priorities and proposed outcomes. These include increasing the number of childcare places available in areas of deprivation, improving literacy in children living in low income families, reducing the prevalence of obesity in children and improving children’s dental hygiene.
The previous plan, for 2019 to 2022, focused on similar themes and despite the impact of Covid-19 had a positive impact. Successful outcomes included a 63 per cent increase in the number of eligible children claiming free school meals, which not only ensures they receive a healthy meal each day but also results in schools receiving additional funding to support pupils. Reports from the Department for Work and Pensions also show that more than 770 children living in low income families moved out of poverty between March 2020 and 2021.
Councillor Rebecca Smith, Cabinet Member for Strategic Planning, Homes and Communities, said: “I’m incredibly proud of our new action plan which clearly outlines the steps that we, together with our partners, will be taking to support local families and children. We can’t do this on our own and I’m delighted that we’re able to work so closely with partners from the private and voluntary sectors, as well as other public sector organisations, all of whom share our ambitions to break the cycle of child poverty.”
“The plan’s four different themes give us a clear approach to tackling both the causes of child poverty, which includes helping parents into employment, and also the major symptoms. We’ll be taking steps to improve the physical and mental wellbeing of children in Plymouth as well as providing opportunities for our children and young people to learn and to be inspired, setting them up for the bright future that every child deserves.”
Read the Child Poverty Action Plan 2022 to 2025.