Today we are releasing our ‘Supporting Families in Time of Financial Hardship’ resource, co-produced with Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG).  Francesca Hogg, from our Poverty Proofing the School Day team, tells us more about this fantastic resource.

As part of our work delivering UK Cost of the School Day with Child Poverty Action Group, today we are publishing ‘Supporting families in times of financial hardship: A short guide on what schools should know and what they can do to support struggling families’.

This resource comes at a time when families across the UK are facing increasing pressures on their family budgets and a squeeze on their income. The resource reflects the views of over 1,900 parents and carers gathered through interviews and surveys from 55 schools across England, Scotland and Wales. It is a reflection on what parents and carers have told us their schools do well to support them, but also their practical ideas and suggestions that schools should consider to help families through challenging economic times.

The guide covers four themes:

1.            Relieving rising costs and pressures

2.            Payment processes

3.            Communicating support

4.            Supporting all families

Many of the suggested actions are straightforward and cost-neutral. They simply encourage schools to think slightly differently about how money is talked about and handled to bring about greater inclusion for those struggling with money or living on a low income.

To find out more about investigating the school day from the perspective of children and young people, please contact our team on [email protected].

Read the full report here

As part of our Give Hope for Christmas campaign, we share the story of one teenager taking the first steps in a new story.

We all know it can be hard taking the first step on a new journey. Harder still when you have faced difficult experiences on similar journeys or when you are dealing with the weight of mental health challenges.

Waiting in the rain with her daughter, Mum Alice had hope today would be the first step for her daughter towards a new opportunity for support. At fifteen, Mia had been diagnosed with ADHD and was awaiting a further diagnosis for autism, alongside this she was experiencing mental health challenges.

It was the first time they had ventured to Masquer-Aid, a support group run by Children North East for neurodiverse young people to share experiences, learn, laugh and get help with their mental health; and they were struggling to find the venue.

“Nina kindly met us in the rain and introduced herself and the Masquer-Aid service.”

The three of them came in from the rain, into a safe space with sky blue walls and warm faces.

Mia had been reluctant to attend, after finding similar professionals didn’t “understand her”, cancelling the previous appointment.

“Nina was very understanding of this and gave me more time to encourage Mia to give Masquer-Aid a chance. I really appreciated her patience.”

“The way Nina spoke with Mia, understood her needs and issues and made her feel at ease. Mia opened up to Nina in a way she hasn’t done for any other professional.”

After the session, Alice shared that she had hope it was the start of something that will make a difference for her daughter.

“Mia was equally impressed as I was yesterday by Nina and what she had to offer in terms of support and understanding.

“Mia really felt like you were on her level, and you actually understood her and she never feels like that, ever.”

Sometimes the first step on a new journey can be hard, but the Children North East are here to offer our support; whatever the weather.

Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the family.

Kavli Trust, owner of the famous Primula Cheese, have funded a £170,000 project to battle the impact of child poverty in our region. 

Children North East will work in collaboration with sixty schools across the North East, to introduce Poverty Proofing® the School Day programme. The programme will work with pupils, families and staff to identify ways that children are missing out at school due to money and come up with solutions. 

According to government data, 38% of North East children live in poverty. Children living in poverty are more likely to experience low attainment, bullying and go hungry during the school day. 

Lorna Nicoll, Poverty Proofing the School Day Manager, explains, “School can be expensive. Uniforms, lunches and trips add up and we know that families, including many not eligible for free school meals, struggle to make ends meet or get into debt trying to keep up. We listen to pupils and the school community and then work with the school to come up with bespoke, creative ways to make things easier whether it’s second-hand uniform schemes, changing the times of clubs, ensuring activities don’t require materials or allowing kids to use their free school meal allowance across both break and lunch.” 

Kavli Trust operates across four countries and has a strong presence in the North East, manufacturing its famous squeezy cheese in Gateshead. Every penny of profit Kavli brands such as Primula generates is invested in good causes, 70% within its operating countries, making £7.8m of charitable investment in 2021 alone. 

The project is expected to directly benefit 8,400 pupils in first year and many more whose families are facing financial difficulty. Students attending the school in future years will also benefit. 

Paul Lewney, Managing Director at Kavli UK, commented, “We are very proud to fund this important work improving the lives of children and families across the North East. For sixty years, all profits from Kavli brands, including Primula Cheese, have been used to support good causes making a difference to individuals in their local communities and to society as a whole. We look forward to seeing the positive impact this latest partnership creates.” 

Leigh Elliott, Chief Executive at Children North East, said, “Kavli Trust’s generous support for our Poverty Proofing© work has made it possible to help schools create a school day in which every child can take part fully, regardless of their financial background. The funding could not come at a more important time as more families see their finances stretched by the rising cost-of-living.” 

In our latest team guest blog, Emma Leggott our Poverty Proofing Co-Ordinator for arts, culture and heritage shares her vision for a sector that challenges itself to break the cycle that sees financial background influence engagement, sharing her Poverty Proofing® expertise along the way.

‘Imagine If… 2022’ is the theme of this year’s brilliant Culture Bridge Annual Conference, which is exploring how organisations can take action to ensure that each child and young person has access to arts and culture, today and every day. 

Imagine if…admission to all museums was free, imagine what the impact would be for children living in poverty and the gains that would be made in addressing class inequality. Huge right?  

Well, perhaps not. My work in cultural settings has given me insights that encourage me to challenge some of the assumptions around free admission and provides some alternatives that could prove more effective.   

Poverty and class aren’t the only determinants influencing someone’s likelihood to take part in the arts or visit a cultural setting. Ethnicity, geographical location, parental beliefs, attitudes and experiences are all up there as deciding factors (Brook et al 2020).  

As a society our appetite for arts and cultural attendances is not as widely pursued as one might think. Even cinema which is viewed as pretty mainstream only sits at around 60%, with 1/3 of Brits attending only one live music concert per year, 5% attending ballet, 1/5th art galleries, 1/12th classical music, 4% opera and 3% contemporary dance (Brook, 2021).  Overall attendances at museums and libraries appear to be declining too, as people opt instead for film and video (one of the few areas to see an increase in participation – 49% to 71.1%) according to audience survey data (Whitaker, 2016, The Warwick Commission, 2015).  

It is worth pointing out that ‘culture’ – in the context of an article about poverty, cultural inequality and class divide – is in and of itself ‘ordinary.’ Food, music, hobbies, interests, TV, religion, family routines, community rituals are all ‘expression of beliefs and values in the everyday conduct of life’ and are all forms of culture (Williams cited in Matrasso, 2021 p33). 

Where access to culture becomes less ‘ordinary’ is in the domain of – often publicly funded – art galleries, theatres, music venues and heritage sites where it is that a privileged minority make up the majority of programmers, participators and attendances (Warwick Commission, 2015, p33, Brook et al, 2022). 

The reasons why this is so and why people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to take up this space is complex and well debated. Generally speaking, barriers to access tend to fall into two main categories- either practical (relating to transport and cost) or social or attitudinal (relating to beliefs, experiences, feeling welcome, sense of belonging) (Whitaker, S. 2016). 

From a Poverty Proofing® perspective, organisations, at the start of their journey, tend to have an awareness of social and attitudinal barriers (grand-off-putting-buildings, feelings of ‘it’s not for me’), yet tend to focus more of their thinking and resource towards addressing the more tangible, practical barriers such as free admission when looking to improve access for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. 

Free Admission 

Is this down to the premise that cultural leaders find it ‘traitorous to acknowledge’ that free admission doesn’t work?  

This was the conclusion arrived at by Colleen Dilenschneider in her 2019 article ‘Digesting the Data – Five Cultural Organisation Findings Even We Found Difficult to Swallow.’ She wrote that cultural organisations can’t let go of the idea that being free is the same as being welcoming. She argues it is not and goes further in her data to show the opposite in fact – that ‘free admission does not significantly impact attendance’ and ‘free admission to museums does not attract lower income individuals’ (Dilenschneider, 2019). 

When, for example, DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) made entry to its London museums free only 13% of attendances were taken up by people from lower socio-economic groups, compared to 87% from higher (Warwick Commission, 2015). 

According to Dilenschneider visiting a cultural organization as a child with family is one of the most likely determinants influencing participation in later in life. She also pointed out this impact is not the same for children who only ever visited as a group or with school. These visits tended to be ‘one-off’ encounters, more likely to leave a negative lasting impact’ where people reported falling asleep, feeling bored or unwelcome. This was in contrast to visiting as a family where the lasting impact was associated with more positive memories and experiences. 

The Poverty Proofing® Principles 

Poverty Proofing principles recognise the need to strike a careful balance between the diversification of income for cultural organisations, whilst also removing barriers in access to families in poverty. Making things free – as this article has shown – is not the ‘magic bullet’ in addressing cultural or class inequality (nor is targeting school groups).  

The challenge is to widen thinking beyond free admission and instead think about how to create and achieve the same sense of warmth and belonging for those who did not get to experience it as a child. Here are six key Poverty Proofing® principles to help achieve this goal:  

• Welcome & Belonging; If you don’t hold intrinsically warm memories of cultural institutions, how do you change hearts and minds? An imposing building and a bad experience can be broken down by a warm and friendly welcome from someone with whom positive associations can be made. Human contact and relationship building is key to this by people who are representative and relatable and who share lived experience of the issues you are trying to address. 

• Programming & Voice; There is not a lack of demand for culture, remember culture is ordinary! Rather, there is a mismatch between the ‘public tastes’ of the majority and the ‘high-brow’ tastes of the minority in charge of funding and programming the cultural offer in this country (Warwick Commission, 20XX). The antidote to this is championing the voices of wide and diverse audiences through meaningful participation programmes.  

• Permission; Letting people know it’s okay and giving permission is singly one of the biggest things you can do. Let’s face it, you need to be pretty self-assured and self-confident to engage with something new for the first time, especially as an adult.  

• The hook; if you’re not a culture vulture, a history buff, or a theatre goer then why would you go, what’s in it for you. This will take some thinking outside the box. So many venues have event and activity programmes beyond their core offer why not diversify further, what are the needs in your community and how do you engage hearts and minds creatively. Food often helps! 

• Understanding & Communicating the value; How do you let people know the bang for their buck, if you’ve never been somewhere you’re very unlikely to part with hard earned cash for something you’ve never done before. Making films showing what goes on behind the doors, heritage open days, taster days, word of mouth and people championing their experiences are all ways beyond a corporate mailing list, especially because despite what marketing departments think, not everyone has the internet!! 

Poverty Proofing® is a concept developed at Children North East. For further information or to look at a bespoke process designed around the needs of your organisation please contact [email protected].

References  

Brook, O. et al (2020) ‘Why Culture is Bad for You,’ Manchester University Press. 

Brook, O. (2021) Culture and Privilege, Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4, 08 September 2021. 

Dilenschneider, C. (2019) School Groups vs Family Visitors: Which Kids Come Back as Adults, online, available from: School Groups vs. Family Visitors: Which Kids Come Back As Adults? (DATA) – Colleen Dilenschneider 

Dilenschneider, C. (2019) Digesting the Data – Five Cultural Organisation Findings Even We Found Difficult to Swallow, online, available from: Digesting the Data – Five Cultural Organization Findings Even We Found Difficult to Swallow – Colleen Dilenschneider 

Matarasso, F. (2019) A Restless Art: How Participation Won and Why it Matters, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London, UK. 

The Warwick Commission (2015) ‘Enriching Britain: Culture, Creativity & Growth,’ University of Warwick, available from: warwick_commission_final_report.pdf, accessed 09.10.22. 

Whitaker, S. (2016) Hurdles to the participation of children, families and young people in museums: a literature review, Kids in Museums, available from: Hurdles-to-Participation.pdf (kidsinmuseums.org.uk), accessed 09.10.22.

Life will never return to pre-pandemic normality for children and young people, says our new Voices report produced in collaboration with Newcastle University.

The report is the most comprehensive account so far of how every aspect of their lives was affected by Covid-19. It looks at their relationships, education, work, plans for the future and health and wellbeing.

Joint project lead Liz Todd, Professor of Educational Inclusion at Newcastle University said, “ Young people have been seriously and deeply impacted on by the pandemic. All aspects of their lives have been affected. There is no return to how things were before – but there is lots that people can do.”

The VOICES team spoke to 1,780 children, aged five to 18 from across the North East of England. Most of them came from some of the country’s most deprived areas and they described their experiences in words and in drawings.

Joint project lead Luke Bramhall, Head of Youth Services and Poverty Proofing at Children North East, said: “The pandemic made a profound impact on children and young people across the UK. Through the report, we are able to better understand and respond to the lasting needs of that generation, from support with mental health to dealing with missed education milestones. Our hope is that the voices shared in its pages will be heard and those working with children and young people can take action to support them.”

Children said they missed their friends, worried about family and missed everyday experiences such as going to the shops. One child said: “I cried worrying if people I loved were going to die.”

Learning remotely was challenging for many youngsters, either as a result a lack of technology at home, or just trying to learn in a home full of people. Sometimes schools did not send children enough work. One child said: “I hated online school.”

When schools returned, the children valued seeing friends, being in contact with teachers and the structure of the school day. But ongoing Covid-19 restrictions could make school difficult. There was a lot of anxiety about exams and going to university. “ When we went out to play, no-one wanted to play,” said one pupil. “We weren’t able to touch and all we could do was sit on a bench.”

Health and wellbeing were profoundly affected, with a lot of youngsters being far less physically active than before and their mental health suffering . “ bored realy bord realy realy realy bord and I am just sitting in the house all day,” said one child . Another said: “Doesn’t feel like a life.”

Inequality also had a big impact on how young people experienced the pandemic. Some families whose circumstances had changed because of Covid-19 reported eating less and walking more. Some children didn’t have access to digital devices and suffered from a lack of space in their home. Many young people were grateful for services provided by community centres, schools and youth organisations which arranged activities and resources for disadvantaged families.

Digital devices were a valuable tool, helping young people to stay in touch with their friends through games and social media. However, not every experience was positive. “It affected me – I got addicted – (it’s) now become part of my life,” said a child. Another said: “I spend 18+ hours a day online.” And adults didn’t understand how important digital activities are to children now. “Adults don’t understand how much we rely on it (Wi-Fi/internet). They don’t understand why we need it so much, but we do.”

While many youngsters were saddened at not being able to participate in their favourite activities, others learned new skills such as knitting, cooking and decorating.

The researchers have called for measures including free access to digital devices and broadband for children and young people, fair access to public transport, further research into the long-term impact of Covid-19 on children and young people, and a digital curriculum or schools and colleagues.

Professor Todd called upon policy makers and people in positions of power to listen to make changes. “Many people don’t have the time we had to really listen to so many young people from such a wide age range and across a whole region of England in this way,” she said. “But they do have time to act. Our recommendations all need to be achieved and they can be achieved in full by those running services and those making policy.”

She added: “When people read our report they are surprised about how much children notice and how much they think about everything that’s going on in the world. They’re also surprised by how much children care about their friends, families, their communities and the world around them. This is why our report matters.”

Luke Bramhall, said: “We hope this report will encourage action for those across the UK to empathise with the lasting impact the pandemic had on young people across the UK and act to help them to overcome it.”

Read the Voices Project Summary report >

Read the Voices Project Full report >

Every year, Children North East reaches thousands of babies, children, young people and families across the North East and beyond… Our ‘Week in the Life’ blog series shines a spotlight on some of the amazing people who help make that impact possible, from practitioners working in the heart of communities to teams behind the scenes keeping the lights on.

In this edition, we meet Quinn Stanger, who moved roles within Children North East to Project Coordinator for SEND and Short Breaks Peer Mentoring services. The work he does is wide-ranging from training volunteer Peer Mentors to working with the young people receiving peer support. Let’s learn more…

What’s the first thing you’re doing on Monday morning?

Catching up with my fellow Coordinator, Sarah Bell, usually kicks off a Monday morning, allowing us to review the current status of referrals and matches whilst highlighting the priorities for the week. Fortnightly we also have a Short Breaks mini-team meeting, including the two youth workers providing additional support for the projects. Following these meetings, the week’s work begins in earnest, catching up on emails and new referrals, reviewing 1-2-1 mentor sessions for the week and looking at the myriad of internal and external meetings in my calendar that week. We’re so busy now that I have to ensure I schedule time for lunch!

What does a typical day look like for you?

Firstly, there is no typical day! With our projects spanning North East and North Cumbria, with so many moving parts, staff must be flexible and adaptable to current situations.

My work can be split into two parts: the young people referred to our service and the volunteer mentors. Once received, a referral for a young person involves an initial enquiry with the referrer to gather further information and an update on the young person’s situation. 

Following we then organise an initial assessment with the young person in the family home; this allows us to get to know the young person, their strengths and areas they’d like to improve, in turn, allowing us to develop goals that can be worked on with the mentor. All our work is person-centred, led by the young person and all about THEM!

Whilst the initial work with the young person is being carried out, in the background, Coordinators recruit, interview and carry out background checks on the volunteer mentors. 

All our mentors receive accredited training through ONE Awards and are intensively supported throughout their engagement with Children North East.

Coordinators then have a RAM (Referrals Allocation Meeting) to discuss mentors ready to match and which young person would be a good match. We try to match on hobbies and interests; however, sometimes it’s a gut instinct they’ll get on! There are strict procedures in place to support the 1-2-1 sessions between mentors and young people; a significant part of my week is supporting these sessions from afar, ensuring the safety of all involved.

In addition to my work on Peer Mentoring, I have recently been involved in several projects supporting young people identifying or questioning as LGTBQ+. We have a long-established group in Gateshead, PLUS, which I’m proud to have some involvement with; the young people attending are amazing and make me think about the world in every session.

To recruit mentors, we regularly attend events; I’ve been coordinated Children North East’s presence at Northern Pride in Newcastle this summer. Plenty of challenges present themselves in attending these events, and I love our teamwork approach to ensuring we deliver! I was really excited to have been be part of the Pride Parade with PLUS members and support our presence in the Family and Youth Zone this year, a first for Children North East.

I have also been involved in a piece of work delivered as an across-service team around Identity, Acceptance and Inclusion within the school environment. This exciting project has highlighted a need for increased awareness and support for young people exploring their identity (including gender and sexuality), particularly within education.  Watch this space for more developments…

What most excites you about your role as a Project Coordinator?

The progress and development of the individuals and families we work with makes all the hard work worthwhile.  For example, seeing a young person develop their communication skills, so they can express their wishes and opinions, to hearing that a young person has grown their independence by becoming able to access public transport alone. Discussing with mentors how they have developed individually and what they take away personally from volunteering. When you see a young person explore and discover their own identity, having space to be comfortable with themselves, to then share that positively with their families is so heartwarming, I feel honour in having played a small part in their lives.

What did you do before you Children North East?

It’s a been long and winding road to Children North East.  Initially, I aspired to be a Medical Officer in the Royal Navy, attending Medical School at a Scottish University. However, my mental health laid to rest those plans, and I’ve been back in the North East after three years in Scotland.  Having delved into pharmacy and retail management, I then spent several years learning to live with Bipolar Disorder. Volunteering within youth work, I got my drive back and have been progressing within the field ever since.  This year I finally finished a degree, although not the one I’d anticipated when I started it 18 years ago!

What do you enjoy outside of work?

Being surrounded by friends and family keeps me going.  Whether it’s hosting dinner parties, long walks in the country or somewhere in the sun by the pool! I’m known within work for having travelled to a number of Eurovision host cities to get involved with celebrations; I’m very interested to see where 2023 will take us! I also need a new hobby to fill the time I’ve spent studying over the last two years!