Poverty and low income in Elmbridge - a panel discussion

At the launch event for our new report Under the Radar, we heard from an excellent panel of speakers who brought ideas and experience from their own organisations for ways to innovate and drive change at a local level. Below is a summary of the key points. A big thank you to everyone who took part.

How do we innovate in the face of a crisis?

Victoria Steward Todd, Director at Kensington & Chelsea Charitable Foundation

One of the beauties of working for a small, local organisation is that we can be much more agile and quick to respond. We can get the right people around the table quickly and agree what's needed, how we’re going to address it and move quickly to raise funds.

Remember you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We already had a campaign called Winter Warmth, where we asked people who didn't need their fuel payments to donate them so we could support older people who needed help with their fuel bills. We have just expanded that scheme to include the new Cost of Living payment. If people don’t need it, they can donate it.

We’ve also been trialling a new innovation called Cash First which is run through four local advice agencies. This gives people cash to spend on food or whatever it is they need (unfortunately, it is mostly food). This is a great way to get money out quickly to the community.

Jonathan Lees, Founder of Good Company and the East Surrey Poverty Truth Commission

There are challenges going on all the time. We are forever reacting and sometimes we need to explore a much more preventative approach. For example, we've been working with clients to look at their household bills. So, if their energy bills are high and they’ve got a freezer that's ten years old just sucking power, we look at buying them a new one which will bring down their bills.

Using warm banks as another example, is there a way of being more constructive? In Epsom High Street there are at least 15 cafes that are struggling to keep going, that are paying to heat that space. Could we bring together the business sector with the public sector and charities to find solutions? Could we put some money in to support these businesses to keep going so they can offer a warm space to local people that is open all the time and designed for people to come together?

The challenge is having the thinking time. With more funding, charities could spend time thinking about preventing rather than reacting.

Katherine Hill, Strategic Project Manager at 4in10

It’s also worth remember that charity staff and volunteers are really tired. We have to acknowledge that it’s getting more difficult to endlessly respond to challenges and to also innovate. We need to be thinking a bit more about the systemic root causes of these issues and challenges more front-on.

What can we do locally to tackle growing levels of in-work poverty?

Katherine Hill, Strategic Project Manager at 4in10

There are big national campaigns running around uprating benefits, signing those petitions and making our views known through those channels is really important. But there are also things that can be done locally. I really like the idea of a Surrey wage mentioned in the report and think that should be explored.

Childcare is another big issue linked to in-work poverty. Some London families we worked with recently put childcare as a driver of poverty ahead of housing costs. I think there’s a challenge for the private sector locally to think about childcare. For a thriving workforce, people need to have childcare. It’s as important as transport for getting to work.

Sam Tims Economist at New Economics Foundation

Yes, a lot more needs to be done on childcare and Social Security isn't increasing to account for that. There needs to be more low-cost but high-quality childcare. The recommendation in this report is making charitable spaces available rent free so that you get rid of one of those particularly high costs. Eg, could the council use space in local libraries to open up a childcare service for a couple of days a week and charge low amounts? But if you don't deal with childcare, then in-work poverty and possibly forcing people out of work and into further poverty is going to be a major issue.

How do we better involve people with lived experience?

Jonathan Lees, Founder of Good Company and the East Surrey Poverty Truth Commission

Too often we're full of good ideas and we think we know the answers but actually we need to hear from the people we're working with. We need people who are in poverty to tell us really what it is and what's going on. The East Surrey Poverty Truth Commission runs on the ethos of nothing about us is without us.

For this work, we brought together people who make decisions that affect our community eg, people in the police, education, health, councillors etc and people who are in poverty to just talk. No agenda, just talk.

Victoria Steward Todd, Director at Kensington & Chelsea Charitable Foundation

We’ve just done a Skills Employment Grant round where the panel is made up of six local people with lived experience of multiple barriers to employment. We paid them for their time at double London Living Wage and they designed the criteria, they will assess and score the applications and they will decide where the money goes. It’s been so insightful.

Katherine Hill, Strategic Project Manager at 4in10

I think it's also about bringing creativity into it. During Challenge Poverty Week I saw lots of examples where people with lived experience have led campaigning in ways that make sense to them. For example, a group of activists from ATD Fourth World produced a fantastic piece of theatre called We Make Our Mark; and a group of young people in Barking and Dagenham choreographed a piece of street dance linking poverty, inequality and youth violence in their community.