Tackling Poverty Strategy

Tackling Poverty Strategy

The consultation was in collaboration with Livewell Southend. The survey compromised of questions relating to Tackling Poverty and was answered by 643 people.

Summary Findings

Key findings from the survey(External link) are:

We launched an online consultation called "Help shape our new Tackling Poverty Strategy", with a household survey.

The survey had 643 responses, of which 36%* (240) of those were collected through paper surveys.

We also held an engagement week, where we visited food provision settings to engage with the public face-to-face.

Who is experiencing this in Southend?

The residents who completed the household survey, considered themselves to be personally experiencing poverty. We obtained the following information about residents:

• 78% of respondents have children

• 40% of respondents are renting privately

• 35% of respondents have caring responsibilities (paid or unpaid)

• 26% of respondents are from an ethnic minority background

Household / tenure:

• 40% live in a rented accommodation

• 37% renting from a Housing Association or live in a council house

• 14% own a home with a mortgage

• 6% are homeless or sofa surfing

• 3% own a home outright (no mortgage)

• 0.8% living with parents/guardians

• 63% of respondents, said ‘there was a time when support was needed and not available…’

What support do residents in Southend need?

From the data obtained, we noted that residents were looking for the following support and advice around the following topics:

• Gas, electricity, fuel

• Housing and rent

• Food support

• Mental health and physical health support

• Benefit, debt, and budgeting advice

• Family and childcare support

• 74% of respondents said they ‘would consider stopping their home broadband or entertainment package due to the Cost-of-Living crisis’

• 30% of respondents ‘use mobile data and libraries as their main source of internet’

• 54% of respondents considered themselves ‘in poverty’ and have a long-standing illness, with this number increasing with age;

• 96% of respondents aged over 55+, considered themselves to be in poverty, have long standing illnesses

• 66% of respondents who consider themselves ‘in poverty’ have used foodbanks.

It is also worth noting that single people are twice as likely to use food provision support, compared to people who are married or living with a partner according to our household survey.

A question from the household survey noted the following intelligence around reduction of income for those who attended foodbanks caused by:

• Sickness and ill health

• Insecure job and job loss

• Family breakdown and domestic abuse

• 36% of respondent’s main income is through work (60% on benefit, 5% pension)

• 67% of respondents were noted as single, divorced, widowed (age 55+ 85%)

When we asked ‘what support people were looking for the most’ in our household survey, people who considered themselves in poverty said the following:

• Support with utility bills

• Lower threshold on eligibility for working people

• Support with food

• Subsidised childcare

• Awareness of what support is available

• Affordable housing

When we asked ‘what is holding you back the most to get support’ in our household survey people answered in the following order:

• Eligibility

• Not being aware of the support available

• Embarrassment, pride, and stigma

• Mental wellbeing

• Difficultly to navigate the system, for example: filling out forms and provide evidence; lack of face-to-face support; phone lines always busy

Who responded to the survey?

• 16% Shoebury (Postcode SS3)  

• 21% Southend (Postcode SS1) 

• 25.3% Southend (Postcode SS2) 

• 20.4 % Westcliff (Postcode SS0) 

• 17.4% Leigh (Postcode SS9) 

Age breakdown: 

• 18% aged between 18-34 

• 39% age between 35-54 

• 44% aged 55+ 

Gender:

• 70% Female

• 26% Male

• 3% of respondents preferred not to say

• 0.8% Prefer to self-describe

• 14% of the responses are from diverse ethnic backgrounds

It is also worth noting, that we also held a workshop specifically aimed for young people around the topic of poverty; to understand the specific issues that children and young people may face due to the impact of poverty.

Co-Production workshop

Southend-on-Sea City Council volunteered to trial a process called ‘Working Together for Change’, as a way of building local capacity for co-production, to help understand what matters most to people experiencing poverty in Southend and to use that understanding to improve lives.

‘Working Together for Change’ has a simple eight stage recommended process for co-producing change. It was published as best practice guidance for commissioners in 2009 by the Department of Health and been used widely by commissioners and providers ever since.

Working with local foodbanks and voluntary sector partners, the team collected information from interviews and questionnaires; with 30 people being asked what was:

• Working well in their lives

• What wasn’t working well

• What was important to them in the future

On day one of the workshop, we themed this information and spent time identifying the ‘not working’ themes which we thought were having the biggest impact on the largest number of people in poverty in Southend.

We tried to understand why those things were happening and what the impact would be if we could improve things.

On the second day of the workshop, we thought about what changes would make the biggest difference and what we could do in the short to medium term that could help improve the lives of local people.

26 people attended the workshops which were held at a local community venue.

The mix of people included 15 local people with lived experience of poverty from a diverse range of backgrounds which included single parents, young families, pensioners, people with no recourse to public funds, people from ethnic minorities, mental health, and homelessness backgrounds.

Alongside them working as equals, were staff from Southend-on-Sea City Council, local health services and local voluntary sector groups.

The useful community intelligence helped form the foundations of the council’s Tackling Poverty Strategy, and these findings were presented to the workshop participants prior to council staff and partners.

This opportunity allowed us to gather honest feedback, and highlighted areas of concern or anything that may have been missed in the workshops.

An example of this was the design and production of the ‘Cost-of-Living’ booklet. This idea was generated from residents, a simple and effective method for people to use. A booklet to help and support everyone. This model was also supported by partners, who are still utilising this information in their working environments.

Participants were truly part of the co-production journey. From the beginning with the resident engagement (co-planning), co-designing, and co-evaluated the draft strategy.

In fact, some of the residents who have been part of this co-production pilot, are now also part of other community focus groups, actively participating and supporting others to work together, and truly be part of council and community decision making. Residents have mentioned how empowering, rewarding, and positive the co-production process has been, and they are likely to take part again in other projects.

It is important to note, that without residents and their lived experience, this would not have been a success, and the content of the strategy has been directed by the community and their needs.

Next Steps

The Strategy has led to a coproduced action plan.

The table below shows how we have responded to the consultation.

You said

People need to know what support is available and feel capable and confident to access it.

We did

• We have produced a cost-of-living booklet giving information clear information on what is available to support people, this has been distributed through partners to 10,000 residents.

• We are redesigning our information database called Livewell to make it more user friendly, this is being launched in June 2023

• We are undertaking four networking meetings across the year for professionals to understand what services are available in the city and how to refer residents to them.

You said

People should be able to ask for, and receive, the support they need without fearing negative perceptions, prejudice and/or experiencing guilt embarrassment and shame

We did

• We are training all staff supporting residents across the city to be trauma informed.

• We will run media campaigns to combat stigma.

• We will continue to work with residents as equal partners to review our actions and take new actions.

You said

We need to support more people who are experiencing fuel poverty

We did

• We set up and promoted warm places over the city during the winter months

• We distributed £25,000 worth of slow cookers and electric blankets to residents most in need through our partners in the community and voluntary sector.

• We supported 8,523 residents through the Household Support and Emergency support fund in 2022/23 with fuel costs.

You said

We need to support more people to stay in education to learn new skills and improve work readiness

We did

• We continue to support a range of pathway to work programmes that has supported 523 Southend residents to upskill such as run by SECTA, HALO and ABSS parent programmes. 172 of the 523 people supported are now in work.

• Southend Action for Volunteering Services (SAVS) have set up a volunteering bureau for the city.

We will continue to engage and review our strategy in 23-24. We might be in touch in the near future to hear your views to assist us to develop more actions to support residents in tackling poverty in our yearly action plans.