Unfortunately, challenges faced by families don’t go away during the festive season which is why our teams, supporters and volunteers work year round to deliver our life-changing services.

This year, we were delighted to welcome a very special guest and our long-time Patron, Tim Healy, for a visit to our Boogie Bairns session at Cowgate. Tim has been a supporter of Children North East for close to 30 years and our cause has always been close to his heart. He continues to work with us to create real change in our region for babies, children and young people.

This was an opportunity for him to connect with our Communities Team to learn more about the incredible work they do with children, young people and families at our Cowgate Hub and speak with our CEO, Leigh Elliott, about our exciting plans for 2025.

He didn’t just come for a cuppa and a catch up though! Tim spent quality time with some of the children, parents, carers and grandparents that use our services, rolling up his sleeves and helping run the Boogie Bairns alongside our Families Coordinator, Alex Kirkpatrick, and put his acting skills to good use reading a story to the children. His visit truly brightened everyone’s day and meant so much to those involved.

See some of our favourite snaps from the day!

Our Cowgate centre runs sessions every weekday, and delivers special events like our Family Fun Days and Beach Trip throughout the year, as well as offering space to partner programs allowing the community to access much needed services on their doorstep. With our Cafe Hope serving hot meals and drinks as well, this truly is a hub at the heart of the community for all.

However, this and all the work we do can only be made possible with the generosity from our supporters, whether it’s one off donations or fundraising events, every penny raised helps up deliver life-changing services to babies, children and young people in the North East. Currently, our teams are seeing some of the most challenging times in memory, with services providing life-changing support such as mental health interventions, help for families in crisis and access to support groups all oversubscribed; whilst traditional funding to meet the demand is scarcer than ever. This Christmas, consider donating to our Be a Lifeline campaign, where you’re not just giving a gift for December – you’re providing a future filled with hope.

Donate to Be a Lifeline now

All our printed Christmas Activity Packs and Paper Chain kits have been claimed, but you can still get a free downloadable PDF below!

We know that Christmas can be a hard time for families, especially if you’re struggling to make ends meet but still want to bring some Christmas cheer in to your own home – so this year, we’re giving away Christmas Decorating kits to families nationwide! These kits are designed for kids of all ages to enjoy, and use inexpensive materials to be budget friendly!

Download your Christmas Activity Pack here!

At Children North East’s recent conference celebrating ten years of our cutting-edge Poverty Proofing® work, we heard from leaders from health, culture and education systems describing their journey of change to tackle poverty in their communities.

The evidence of the links between poverty and poor health outcomes is overwhelming.

We see twice as many incidences of respiratory illnesses for children living in fuel poverty (Institute of Health Equity), the most deprived 10% of children make double the number of A&E visits than the least deprived (The King’s Fund), fewer children living in poverty hit developmental milestones around speech, language, potty training and school readiness (Save the Children). We see soaring childhood obesity (Nuffield Trust), declining dental health (Queen Mary University of London) and an epidemic of mental health issues among children and young people (Mental Health Foundation).

Poor health outcomes continue for a lifetime, and the cost to the public purse is staggering. In diabetes care alone, it is estimated that over £6bn is spent annually on complications that could be prevented with the right care in place. The human cost is worse; hundreds of thousands of children denied the chance to grow up happy, healthy and able to thrive.

Poverty strips families of agency; the ability to plan, to maintain a routine, to make healthy meals, to make and keep appointments, buy the right equipment to meet their children’s basic needs, to budget, to keep their house safe and warm. Under the weight of day-to-day survival, families struggle to act on concerns until things reach crisis point.

The same could be said of public services, which have been surviving on poverty rations for so long. Not being able to invest in more diagnostic equipment that could bring down waiting lists. The regular disruption of patching up buildings no longer fit for purpose. The inability to plan budgets beyond the single year. The lack of capacity to offer routine appointments when they are due. Ever increasing thresholds and the inability to intervene before things reach crisis point.

The intersection is catastrophic for struggling families, who are unable to make appointments with GPs and facing long waits for assessments and treatment, from neuro divergence, to mental health, to surgery for debilitating conditions. Those with the agency and resources can make lifestyle choices to maintain their wellbeing, fight the system to get the care they need or opt for private treatment. Those without continue to find themselves at the bottom of the pile.

It’s clear that we need change.

To address the barriers poverty plays in preventing people accessing the education, opportunity and healthcare they are entitled to, but more than that, to equal up the systems for those using them.

Speakers at our Poverty Proofing Conference discussed how they are bringing their workforces with them on the journey, and how they have looked again at key policies and processes to make inclusion the overriding priority.

Our Poverty Proofing work shows that small changes can have a huge impact. In one health setting, a scheme was set up providing recycled phones to families who couldn’t afford the right technology to monitor their child’s diabetes, ensuring parents already dealing with the health challenges of a child would not have to worry about how they could afford the extra cost of their treatment, or even worse, go without.

Voice is at the heart of the Poverty Proofing model, and using this approach has highlighted dozens of these ‘blind spots’ where assumptions have been made about families having access to resources, or would be able to find the money somehow, just need to ‘budget better’. It also highlights to leaders who don’t think there are issues in their setting the reality people experience. Often this realisation itself is the necessary catalyst for change.

Many specific recommendations made locally, like a recycled phone scheme, are replicable and scalable; what makes a difference in one setting will often make a difference in others.

But other barriers are structural and need change at a higher level. Decision-making about where services are geographically located tied to strategies around maintenance and management of estates. Staff deployment decisions driven by capacity issues. All this affected by infrastructure outside of those systems.

We heard a lot at our conference about transport, the financial cost and complexity of navigating long, multimodal journeys to appointments. As more services are concentrated into larger centres, people have to travel further and the poorest again are the most cut adrift.

We need to bring leaders together to reconsider how services intersect and how they are delivered so we avoid these unintended consequences.

And we can’t ignore the elephant in the room. More and more of our health and social care systems’ resource is being devoured by the ever-growing demands on acute care, growing precisely because people are not getting the healthcare they need at that earlier point. It is the result of a perfect storm of political decision-making, global economic factors, a worldwide pandemic and an ageing population. But it has created a doom loop that needs to be broken before the whole system crumbles.

The Darzi Review makes clear the priority for the health service is to turn the tide on this, getting healthcare back into communities. To make GP appointments accessible in surgeries near where people live, removing the 8am scramble for appointments or the three-week wait, the choice between hoping it clears up by itself or going to A&E.

This, along with a greater prioritisation of prevention and early intervention, is essential to tackling health inequalities and breaking the link between poverty and health.

Investment is part of this, as is direction setting from national government. But the real challenge will be implementing change, and strong, brave leadership at local and regional levels will be critical.

Voices of people using, or struggling to access, services needs to drive change, enabling decision-makers to identify where the systemic issues are, which will be different in each region. Bringing teams along on the journey and making the deliberate but difficult choice to invest proactively in early intervention and prevention work, while all parts of the system are struggling to meet the needs they face in the here and now, are at the heart of the challenge.

The upcoming CPH conference on 27th November 2024 will provide a great opportunity for statutory sector and community leaders to come together to build on this learning and plan meaningful action that can drive real change. At this conference, Children’s North East will be joining other leaders across the country to explore good practice and practical strategies for how to start leading this change. We hope you can join us too.

Originally shared via Centre for Population Health.

This Challenge Poverty Week we would like share to you all about how poverty is affecting children in the North East, and the changes that need to be made at a nationwide policy level to ensure all babies, children and young people grow up happy and healthy.

We are hopeful that the new Child Poverty Taskforce will address the barriers facing millions of children nationwide, and that crucial welfare reforms will be made to eradicate child poverty. With 4.3 million children living in poverty in the UK, drastic action must be taken now.

We have seen evidence of numerous blind spots within our services, systems and structures which are keeping families in poverty and stopping them from getting support. From convoluted claims processes, stringent restrictions on those who qualify and lack of opportunity, these barriers are pushing families further and further in to poverty, with no to little support to lift them out.

67% of children living in poverty in the North East are in ‘working families’ where one or more of the parents are in stable employment, but the cost of living – as well as the hidden costs in day to day life – are making it impossible for them to thrive. Additional aspects like childcare, travel, and healthcare needs all compound to make it harder for people to lift themselves out of poverty.

This Challenge Poverty Week, I encourage you all to reconsider your definitions of poverty and break down the stigma attached. Only by addressing the root causes, uncovering the hidden barriers and tackling these issues will we be able to make sure every baby, child and young person has the happy, healthy start in life they deserve.

Since 2011, our Poverty Proofing® team have been working to understand poverty and how it affects people, and what can be done to to become poverty-informed, reduce stigma and break down barriers. This Challenge Poverty Week, they have created short films for each of our strands of work sharing their expertise, key insights and recommendations.

The new child poverty taskforce is a long overdue commitment to taking the issue of child poverty seriously and has the potential to make life vastly better for millions of children.

However, it needs to take a holistic view of the problem and be willing to commit resources where they are needed to make a real impact in reducing child poverty.

From the frontline work of our pioneering Poverty Proofing® project, and our teams listening to the issues affecting babies, children and young people we work with, here are some of the things we want the Taskforce to take into consideration.

Putting more money in people’s pockets

This is the most fundamental element of lifting families out of poverty, and there are two ways to do this – increase earnings from work, and reform the social security system. We know that we need both, and the taskforce needs to focus on:

• Making work pay, with a minimum wage which reflects real living costs, and an end to exploitative and insecure work
• Making it easier for parents to work by addressing the big gaps around access to childcare. In particular, the issues parents face finding suitable care for school age pupils during school holidays as we know this is a barrier to parents moving into work and staying in work
• Removing punitive measures from Universal Credit, particularly the Benefits Cap, Two Child Limit and Five Week Wait, which are forcing hundreds of thousands of families into poverty

Removing barriers for those on low incomes

‘No activity or planned activity should identify, exclude, treat differently or make assumptions about those babies, children, young people and families whose household income or resources are lower than others.’

This is the driving principle of our Poverty Proofing® work. A holistic Child Poverty Strategy needs to ensure that across the range of services and settings children, young people and families access, they don’t face exclusion or barriers to participation because of low-income.

We have been helping individual settings to identify and remove such barriers for over 10 years, and over this time we have built up a picture of common themes impacting how children are able to get an education, access healthcare, take part in opportunities for development and grow up happy and healthy.

Food and Nutrition

We continue to hear regularly stories of school pupils feeling singled out for being eligible for Free School Meals, for example not being able to sit with their friends or having less choice over what they have to eat. We also know hundreds of thousands of families in poverty don’t qualify for free meals, and many struggle to manage dinner money debt or to provide healthy packed lunches. This policy needs to be properly reviewed so all children can eat well at school and no one faces stigma.

Transport

Low-income households are less likely to have access to a car and rely wholly on public transport. If this is unreliable, expensive, or doesn’t take them where they need to get to, it can make services virtually inaccessible. From the cost of bus fare being a barrier to school attendance, to health clinics held in locations away from major transport hubs, appointment times when buses don’t run frequently, long and complex journeys and resorting to expensive taxis, the issue of transport is a continual theme in our conversations with those on low incomes. It’s a barrier to families visiting cultural venues and having days out during school holidays, and a significant barrier to children taking part in sports, clubs and activities outside of school.

At local and regional levels, schools and multi-academy trusts, local authorities, health services and transport infrastructure bodies need to commit to and take action on ensuring children and young people in poverty can get to where they need to go. Moreover, national government must ensure they are held to account. Listening to young people locally to understand where they want and need to go, what barriers they face, and how they want to travel to develop solutions is critical.

Equipment

Equipment is equally a recurring theme in barriers low-income families face. This includes having the right school uniform and all the hidden costs of school life, particularly at secondary school, with examples cited like computers at home, access to the internet to do homework, ingredients for Food Technology classes, sports kits and more. It all adds up, and those without the means to pay for these things fall behind in their studies and can’t take part in wider enrichment opportunities.

It’s also a problem for families managing health conditions; from having a compatible smartphone and internet access to manage diabetes, to the additional costs associated with a restricted diet and allergies, families on lower incomes are struggling to manage their health well. And that is without the wider aspirations of children – being able to afford football boots so they can play in the local junior league; uniform for the scouts or guides, learning to ride a bicycle.

All these exclusions make it harder for children in poverty to participate fully in society, and to thrive. Many of the solutions are found at place-based level. That’s why it needs to become part of the DNA of our schools, health providers and the wider breadth of organisations and opportunities families access – to listen to people they work with, understand barriers they face and take steps to remove them. This will ensure that a low income doesn’t equal a poorer childhood. Leadership at the national level is needed to drive this change. But this needs to be rooted in a commitment to listen to those with lived experience, and the organisations working with them, who understand the problems and can offer real solutions.

Money isn’t the only problem

Let’s be clear – money is a huge part of the problem. Giving people the money they need to pay the bills, put food on the table and provide a decent standard of living for their children, in a society, which doesn’t penalise poverty at every turn, will solve a huge part of the crisis we are facing.

But the impact of poverty on many families is deep – poor mental health, fractured relationships, substance dependency, violence and abuse blight the lives of thousands of children, and they are messy to address. That’s why we can’t separate financial measures to tackle poverty from the wider social safety net we put around families to give them the best chance to thrive. Those safety nets have been decimated over the last decade, with help not available for many until it’s too late, and children have faced unnecessary trauma; even ending up in the care system.

The child poverty strategy can’t be separated from a holistic plan to ensure support structures around families. Family hubs, intensive family support, mental health provision, addictions services and youth work must be repaired to ensure children have not just the material resources to thrive, but also the safe, nurturing homes and relationships they need in order to grow up happy and healthy.

This summer we are providing activity packs to families and children nationwide. Each pack contains puzzles, educational worksheets and a chance to enter our Summer Holiday Colouring Competition! We know it can be difficult for parents and families to find cost effective ways to keep kids entertained this summer which is why we are providing these free of charge to anyone who requests them.

Tailored for children in KS1, KS2 and KS3, they are packed with literacy tasks, maths problems and puzzles, to keep kids engaged with learning during the summer break. Sometimes it can be for children to transition after the long summer break so these packs can help with keeping their minds engaged with learning and reduce back-to-school stresses. We have also included a list of other free and accessible resources for families to access online.

Colouring In tasks can help reduce anxiety, improve focus and concentration and hone fine-motor skills – as well as being fun and letting kids use their imagination! Inside each pack there’s a chance to enter our colouring in competition and win prizes for days out in Newcastle!

This giveaway has now been closed, but keep an eye out for our future promotions!

A thank you to our sponsor Irwin Mitchell for providing their printing services and making this possible.