Poverty Health warning for Wales
ViewsApril 18th, 2024
In 2017 The National Lottery Community Fund developed a £6 million grant scheme called Helping Working Families to tackle in-work poverty in Wales.
As the scheme comes to an end this year Rowan Campbell, Knowledge and Learning Officer, shares more about its impacts.
The Helping Working Families programme was developed in 2017 with the aim of empowering families experiencing in-work poverty to coproduce solutions working with organisations from the third sector, and to work together to create positive change in their lives.
13 organisations were awarded grants, they are:
| Action in Caerau and Ely (ACE) | £498,343 | Home-Start Cymru | £499,129 |
| Bron Afon | £275,000 | Severn Wye Energy Agency | £499,420 |
| Cardiff Community Housing Association (CCHA) | £472,834 | South Riverside Community Development Centre (SRCDC) | £494,612 |
| Citizens Cymru | £499,364 | Swansea Carers Centre | £498,185 |
| Creating Enterprise C.I.C. | £499,990 | United Welsh Housing Association | £500,000 |
| Felinfoel Family Centre | £210,773 | Valleys Kids | £499,440 |
| Foothold Cymru | £490,606 |
Studying the outcomes of the programme has shown the three most important areas for the participants were:
- Reducing demands on household budgets to ensure that needs are met
Creating Enterprise CIC in Conwy developed a loyalty scheme app that would provide families with discounts at local independent retailers. The scheme is used by 60 businesses and 272 families and is a mutually beneficial way for families to save money, and to support independent businesses.
- Pathways out of poverty – for example, finding access to higher quality and better paid work
Several projects provided training courses and accredited qualifications for participants to access better paid work and employment. In one case, two participants involved in training provided by Felinfoel Family Centre sought self-employment training to start their own cleaning business.
- Mental health – addressing the mental burden experienced by people living in poverty and tackling social consequences of poverty, such as isolation
Our research highlights different ways of addressing this area. Several projects organised trips, activities and events for families to spend time together, and to have experiences that they would otherwise not be able to afford. Support was also tailored for different groups of people; Home-Start Cymru ran a specialised “Dad’s Group” for fathers across Wales, whilst Cardiff Community Housing Association ran a group for women in Butetown to connect with one another and to increase the feeling of belonging to a community.
A benefit of the coproduction and long-term grant approach the Helping Working Families scheme offered has been to allow organisations and participants time to focus on and develop the solutions that best meet their needs, particularly as participants often held more than one job and could be a single parent or worked long and/or unsociable hours. The programme has shown that given the flexibility and resource, solutions can be found through genuine engagement between the third sector and the people that they serve.
In our next guest article you can read in more detail about the solution developed by one of the organisations funded through this programme – Foothold Cymru, based in Llanelli.
In light of the current cost of living crisis, having a better understanding of how third sector organisations can support people, many of whom may be facing poverty for the first time, is paramount to enabling communities to effectively overcome this difficult time. That’s why, since September 2022, over £2 million of National Lottery money has been awarded in Wales in response to increased costs of living. More information on how to apply for support can be found at https://tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.wales/.
If you would like to join us on March 10th at our Helping Working Families event in Cardiff, you can contact us on [email protected]
