A New Approach to Child Poverty: Tackling the Causes of Disadvantage and Transforming Families’ Lives sets out the Government’s approach to tackling poverty for this Parliament and up to 2020. At its heart are strengthening families, encouraging responsibility, promoting work, guaranteeing fairness and providing support to the most vulnerable. This strategy meets the requirements set out in the Child Poverty Act 2010, focuses on improving the life chances of the most disadvantaged children, and sits alongside the Government’s broader strategy to improve social mobility. The core ways to achieve this are:
- A stronger focus on ensuring that families who are in work are supported to work themselves out of poverty, families who are unable to work are able to live with dignity and not entrenched in persistent poverty, and that those who can work but are not in work are provided with services that will address their particular needs and help them overcome barriers to work.
- A stronger focus on improving children’s future life chances, by intervening early to improve the development and attainment of disadvantaged children and young people throughout their transition to adulthood.
- A stronger focus on place and delivering services as close to the family as possible, by empowering local partners and ensuring that local diversity can be recognised, and developing strong local accountability frameworks.
This strategy provides a powerful springboard for progress both towards the income targets over the long term, and towards minimising socio-economic disadvantage for children. Our more detailed measurement and monitoring - including lead indicators and gap measures - will tell us whether we are making an impact and where we need to adjust the approach.
The Government launched a consultation in December 2010 to inform the strategy. The Government's response to the consultation is available on the consultations section of this website.
