Tackling Poverty in Leicester
Our approach and objectives
In Leicester, as elsewhere across the country, the nature of poverty has changed over the past decade. To understand the complexities, we held a summit and focus groups involving representatives from the council, NHS, advice agencies, and voluntary and community organisations.
We gathered data and met over 500 people to map support services and understand the barriers. Follow ups have been held during the pandemic to understand how that is changing the spread and nature of poverty.
We gathered data and met over 500 people to map support services and understand the barriers. Follow ups have been held during the pandemic to understand how that is changing the spread and nature of poverty.
Our vision is that every citizen of Leicester is happy, healthy, engaged in their community and not held back by poverty and its impacts.
Leicester's anti-poverty framework
Our framework was developed from early conversations to better understand the issues for people experiencing poverty.
The light blue ring represents key elements that need to be in place for people to live a comfortable life to a standard that we all should expect.
The middle tan ring represents areas that are essential “enablers”. If people can access advice services when they need them, along with adequate and affordable childcare and transport, these are the gateway to the themes on the orange ring.
Community surrounds the whole framework. We recognise the shared experience of people living in poverty and the important support they can receive from a strong social and community network.
Without the basic needs in the light blue ring being met, or the support of high-quality advice, childcare and transport, people cannot seek to improve their skills, their job prospects or their health and wellbeing.
For any resident, the absence of any of the inner sections of the framework will have a negative effect on their health, wellbeing and social environment.
The middle tan ring represents areas that are essential “enablers”. If people can access advice services when they need them, along with adequate and affordable childcare and transport, these are the gateway to the themes on the orange ring.
Community surrounds the whole framework. We recognise the shared experience of people living in poverty and the important support they can receive from a strong social and community network.
Without the basic needs in the light blue ring being met, or the support of high-quality advice, childcare and transport, people cannot seek to improve their skills, their job prospects or their health and wellbeing.
For any resident, the absence of any of the inner sections of the framework will have a negative effect on their health, wellbeing and social environment.
Our objectives:
- To identify services that support Leicester’s residents to avoid falling into poverty
- To ensure crisis information and services are easy to access and meet the needs of Leicester’s residents and the staff/volunteers in organisations that support them
- To improve support to people experiencing poverty in the short and medium term, increasing choice and independence
- To improve systems and the infrastructure of support in the longer term
- To campaign and lobby for change at a national level to alleviate poverty in the long term
These objectives start with our ambition to prevent people from falling into poverty in the first place. However, they also reflect the reality that some issues require an immediate response because of a crisis. Other issues need support over a number of weeks or months. This may help people to move from living in crisis a lot of the time to being able to make real choices and become less dependent on services. Still further issues are much longer term and may require large-scale changes in infrastructure and approach across the wider system.
One difficulty for a local strategy to tackle poverty is that many of the causes of poverty are driven by factors outside of local control.
A Joseph Rowntree Foundation report concluded that poverty levels are driven by changes to four main factors: the employment rate; earnings; benefits and other income like pensions; and housing costs. Some of these can be influenced at a local level and we look at these in depth. However, where policy decisions are made elsewhere our main lever for change is to campaign and lobby at a national level. We have included a specific objective to support this.
One difficulty for a local strategy to tackle poverty is that many of the causes of poverty are driven by factors outside of local control.
A Joseph Rowntree Foundation report concluded that poverty levels are driven by changes to four main factors: the employment rate; earnings; benefits and other income like pensions; and housing costs. Some of these can be influenced at a local level and we look at these in depth. However, where policy decisions are made elsewhere our main lever for change is to campaign and lobby at a national level. We have included a specific objective to support this.