Agenda item

a)    Child Poverty in Southern Wiltshire – Sarah Heathcote; Head of Child Health Improvement.

b)    To consider the recommendation to approve £18,663.10 of funding for positive activities.

c)     What’s on offer?

·       Grant funding around £4k left in 2016/17

·       Youth club activities funded by the Area Board provided by GoActive, Boomsatsuma and Any Body Can Cook provided at 5 youth clubs across the community area.

·       Funding and project support encouraging intergenerational activities, linking with the Health & Wellbeing strand of work.

Child Poverty in Southern Wiltshire

Sarah Heathcote; Head of Child Health Improvement.

Sarah and her Team had been to a number of Area Boards to give information from the statistics for child poverty for each area. In addition to the statistics it was recognised that local data was also available which had already identified some areas.

The National median income in UK was just over £17.500. In Wiltshire 11.8% of children were deemed to be living in poverty, however in some rural areas there was a real variation. The median income for the area was slightly less than the national average.

Wiltshire has a Child Poverty Strategy. Work had been carried out with Housing and other areas on some of the objectives.

A piece of work by the Children’s Society had showed that poverty affects their sleeping, studying and homework. The issue was very dynamic as families can find themselves falling in and out of child poverty, depending on their income.

For this community area, the number of children in poverty was recorded at 38, which was 8.4% for the area. The statistics here were slightly better than Wiltshire as a whole.

The biggest time to make a difference in a child’s life is in their first 1000 days.

Questions and Comments included:

·       The household income of £27k, was that for an individual? Answer: No that was for the household.

·       Were the statistics reliable over the long term? Answer: Yes, although there were peaks and troughs.

·       What should we be doing? Answer: Today was an opportunity for me to come and give a snapshot of data, some other community areas had followed up with workshops. Tom added that there were other avenues that this could be tackled, such as through the H&WB.

·       The provision of good play equipment and facilities and youth clubs has been good for some areas. Some families did not go away on holiday, so these facilities were valued by young people from those families.

Cllr Devine volunteered to be on working group and hoped others will join him.

The Chairman thanked Sarah for the presentation and added that following the JSA event the Board would try to shape some projects to take forward, so would be in touch.

What’s on offer?

The Area Board commissioned activities from three providers.

Boomsatsuma

Chloe spoke on the activity programme already rolled out across the area.

The young people who took part in the activities were able to develop skills to improve confidence and benefit their lives. They were also able to produce some artwork to reflect what they had achieved.

GoActive

Cat explained that they had been going into the five youth groups since January 2016. Sports and activities were provided, anything they wanted we have tried to provide. It has been really good for the volunteers and youth workers at the clubs to have some structured activities. Archery attack was planned for next year.

Additions to the programme planned for 2017 were to work with Downton and 15 hours to go and do events. Alderbury scouts had also joined in on activities with the group. Activities were offered to communities that did not have a youth group.

There was approximately £4,000 of grant funding remaining in 2016/17.  Youth club activities funded by the Area Board were provided by GoActive, Boomsatsuma and Any Body Can Cook, these were provided at 5 youth clubs across the community area.

The funding and project support encouraged intergenerational activities, linking with the Health & Wellbeing strand of work.

Decision

The Southern Wiltshire Area Board awarded youth funding to renew the contracts with the following providers:

·      Go Active £6,500 towards sports coaching

·       Boomsatsuma £7,500 towards art and music sessions

·       Anybody can cook £4663.10 towards cooking sessions