On the Agenda: Councillor reveals personal motive for taking up child poverty fight

It was tough times for my mam and dad – raising five brothers in Jarrow in the 60s.

Dad was a self-employed barber but had to stop working due to ill health.

My Mam tried to get some part time jobs to support, but back then there was a sort of unwritten rule that men were the breadwinners and women stayed at home and looked after the kids.

Of course, times have changed in some respects – but not in others.

Receiving free school meals was a vital support for my family during those days – but there was, and still is in some cases, a real stigma associated with it.

Nowadays, the rising cost of living is affecting everybody and we’re seeing so much more in-work poverty, so receiving free school meals doesn’t mean families are poor.

It means working families are also feeling financial pressure.

Additionally, the benefits of a daily balanced nutritious hot meal on children’s health, wellbeing and development, cannot be underestimated.

Child poverty has risen over recent years.

Nearly a third – 29.2% of children in the UK – were living in households in poverty in 2022/23, and South Tyneside remains one of the most deprived areas of the county, with nearly a third of our young people living in poverty.

This is affecting the lives of children now and in the future with poverty linked to low birth weight in babies, poor physical and mental health, and much more. No child gets a second childhood and what happens during this crucial period of development can impact outcomes for the rest of their lives. Poverty is holding back too many of our young people.

We have an enormous task ahead of us.

Due to the magnitude of the issue, a partnership approach is needed to tackle the issue, building on fantastic work that is already happening across South Tyneside.

Earlier this month we published the region’s first Child Poverty Strategy setting out the picture in South Tyneside, the challenges we face and how we are

working with our partners to help reduce the impact of child poverty on families – and doing everything we can to prevent it happening in the first place.

It follows a Child Poverty Summit we held last October, which brought together partners from across a range of sectors and services to understand the local issues and help to identify actions that will have the biggest impact in alleviating child poverty.

The Strategy mirrors four key areas set out in a report by the North East Child Poverty Commission and published in February 2024.

This includes helping families maximise income; making work a route out of poverty; giving youngsters the best start in life and making all decisions through a poverty lens.

We have already committed to enhancing support to schools to reduce the cost of the school day with things like school uniforms, and support for parents just above the Free School Meals threshold.

We are also encouraging take-up of Free School Meals, rolling out more baby boxes to new parents, providing further welfare support within our Family Hubs, expanding advice on money matters and helping to provide sustainable cooking tips to parents within school settings.

In fact, our work to tackle poverty started long before our Child Poverty Strategy was developed.

It began five years ago with a Poverty Commission, led by the former People Select Committee. Since then, we have established a multi-agency poverty group, held two anti-poverty summits and published an anti-poverty strategy in February 2024.

This led to a range of measures to support people through the cost-of-living crisis.

We have worked with organisations to establish more than 70 Welcoming Places across the borough, boosted, school uniform and holiday provision, Council Tax support as well as support for food banks.

But we can only do so much.

Most of the levers to action real change are still in the control of central government and we want a voice on this issue.

For this reason, we have made child poverty a real focus in our Influencing strategy aimed at raising the profile of key issues facing the borough and influencing the regional and national Government agenda.

Developing a child poverty strategy is just one of the ways we are lobbying for policy change for the benefit of our residents and families all over the UK.

The National Child Poverty Strategy is due to be published later this year.

We shouldn’t need one.

We should be living in a society where poverty, and child poverty doesn’t exist.

But it does and, as someone who has felt the sharp end of deprivation growing up, I’ll do everything I can to improve things for our next generation.