Support and recommendations
We want to be action focused. These recommendations are focused on what systems and ways of working could be changed at a local level. They are based on feedback from our residents as well as national evidence.
We are really interested to know how you intend to use these recommendations. If you would like to get in touch with us to tell us more, please contact us at DPHReport@kirklees.gov.uk.
Recommendations
What would make life easier
Through conversations with residents, people living in poverty shared what would help make life easier:
Support with Cost of Living: Residents all identified that the increased cost of bills such as food, rent and utilities was having a significant negative impact on how they were managing. Targeted support to mitigate these increases would help to reduce some of the pressures they face on a daily basis.
Value lived experience: Residents highlighted the importance of professionals and decision makers making efforts to gain a deeper understanding of local people's experiences of poverty to challenge assumptions and prevent decisions being made which are disconnected from the reality of living in poverty. To read more about the lived experience of those living in poverty in Kirklees please see: Healthwatch Kirklees - Never Heard .
Access to services: Residents asked that more thought is given to the rising cost of living within the design and delivery of services including access costs such as travel. Find out where people who want help and support are giving up, and work with them to remove those barriers.
Person and community-centred support: Residents hugely value face-to-face support from a consistent and trusted person in the heart of their community who can take the time to listen, understand and connect them with other people, groups, and services, without feeling like they are being passed from agency to agency.
Help into employment: Residents shared that they would value more help getting into work such as applying for roles and preparing for interviews. Residents said they want to work but need more flexible work opportunities, affordable childcare, and support with other related costs like travel and DBS applications to get back in to work.
Free spaces to connect: Residents shared the importance of having places to go in their community to socialise and connect with new people, where people look out for each other, and without having to spend money.
Access to good quality affordable homes: Residents shared the impact of poor-quality and precarious housing on both their physical and mental health. Having access to good quality, affordable homes with secure tenure would support people to live happier, healthier lives.
What to do as a wider health and care system in Kirklees
Evidence based advocacy: Local action can significantly enable individuals to improve their circumstances and provide better opportunities for people to live and work. However systemic issues also require the support of national policy. Leaders should advocate and make the case for change needed to address systemic poverty across Kirklees and the need for bold, decisive and innovative solutions to address this. The Marmot Review 10 years on provides a broad range of evidence-based policy recommendations which can contribute to a reduction in inequalities and improved life expectancy. This includes recommendations to ensure a health standard of living for all, which are:
- Ensure everyone has a minimum income for healthy living through increases to the National Living Wage and redesign of Universal Credit.
- Remove sanctions and reduce conditionalities in welfare payments.
- Prioritise the provision of good quality, affordable homes.
- Put health equity and wellbeing at the heart of local, regional and national economic planning and strategy.
- Adopt inclusive growth and social value approaches nationally and locally to value health and wellbeing as well as, or more than, economic efficiency.
- Review the taxation and benefit system to ensure it achieves greater equity and is not regressive.
Leadership across the system should work collectively to implement these recommendations at a local level, develop poverty aware policies and strategies and advocate for national policy level change. This report will be taken to the Health and Wellbeing board as well as other strategic partnerships in order to garner strategic commitment and to plan for collective action.
Demonstrate a visible partnership of commitment: A shared commitment to tackling poverty should be clearly visible from the highest levels across organisations. Leadership should demonstrate strategic commitment to collectively take action on the social and economic root causes of poverty.
Develop opportunities for inclusive sustainable economic local change: Embed social value opportunities into commissioning and investment decisions to maximise the economic, social and environmental benefits to all our residents, communities and businesses. Ensure decision makers in procurement and investment across the system consider the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) arrangements of contractors to ensure they support our residents.
Communications: Consider how local insight, working with partners, and exploring new ways to engage with residents to help to frame and influence future engagement and improve access to services and support. This could tie into existing communications campaigns, for example, Kirklees Council Cost of Living Support campaign.
Lived experience: Strategic leadership should prioritise and utilise the lived experience and insight of people and communities impacted by poverty across all work. This includes building on the engagement which has begun through this report and involving people with lived experience in meetings and forums to ensure that they have a voice.
Partnerships: Create opportunities for learning and reflection. Continue to develop cross-organisational collaborative working and networking via mechanisms such as the Tackling Poverty Partnership.
What organisations working with Kirklees residents can do
Benefit Entitlement and income maximisation: Public sector providers across all service areas should identify the need for and promote uptake of the full range of targeted statutory financial assistance that already exists. Kirklees Cost of living support, financial support and debt advice can provide more information.
Debt collection: Organisations in all sectors that have a debt collection function should work to adjust their processes towards being sensitive to the financial and mental health needs of communities and customers.
Pathways: Integrated Care System partners should consider how they embed support with rising living costs into clinical pathways. This could include considerations around transportation and prescription charges but also extending holistic assessments to include exploratory conversations around cost of living in a sensitive and non-stigmatising way.
Data and intelligence: Organisations could consider how they develop and use their data and intelligence functions in order to help identify households and communities who are most at risk from the rising cost of living and share this information with relevant partners. This could include gathering and use of community insight to help guide the planning, delivery and evaluation of services.
Training and supervision: Support your workforce with training and supervision to offer support or signposting to Cost of Living resources at an individual level
Reduce access costs: Consider any costs incurred when accessing services, such as travel, and whether anything could be done to reduce these costs for example use of local venues, digital access etc.
Signpost and support: Signpost and support residents to access the Kirklees Cost of Living website for advice on how people can reduce their bills and access support.
Cash first systems: If your organisation is supporting people with food or essential household items, think about how you could implement cash first options as this allows residents the dignity of choice.
Support with childcare costs: Organisations who work with children and families should continue to identify and provide early help to families with young children where childcare costs are leading to financial hardship, either directly or because of barriers to workforce participation.
Benefits and entitlements: Seek to identify and ensure people are aware of all of the benefits and entitlements available to both people who are and are not exempt, e.g. prescription charge exemption certificates for people on low incomes, electricity rebates for home oxygen, and the routine healthcare charge exemptions for certain group. Take into consideration all barriers to uptake and explore opportunities to co-locate welfare advice with other services people routinely access.
Minimising expenditure: Helping individuals access consumer support from Kirklees Citizens Advice and Law Centre which can help reduce bills and costs associated with debt. Try to be as flexible as possible around working hours to accommodate childcare arrangements.
Debt advice: Work across partnerships to deliver debt advice services sufficiently to meet need. Ensure your organisations staff are familiar with and signpost to Kirklees Citizens Advice and Law Centre
Mental Health: Organisations should ensure that people in a mental health crisis are able to access debt advice and a temporary suspension of any enforcement action through the Breathing Space scheme.
Credit Unions: Promote credit unions in your cost-of-living response communications; for both staff and for residents.
Debt management: Promote local debt management support provided by Kirklees Citizens Advice and Law Centre and Kirklees Homes and Neighbourhoods tenants can access support through the Money Advice team who can provide free impartial advice to all tenants ranging from budgeting and money management, debt, insolvency, rent matters, negotiating with creditors and a whole host of issues arising from welfare reforms.
Power of communities: All commissioners and providers of support should maximise the use of power within communities and individuals in order to advocate for themselves.
Inclusive Communities Framework: Use the Inclusive Communities Framework to support and guide your work in local places. The purpose of the ICF is to enable a focus on reach, connectivity and working alongside; enabling people to be actively involved and not passive recipients. Using the ICF provides a tool to identify which population groups are not accessing support and challenges partners and communities to work with trusted local voices.
Place based: Consider how debt advice can be provided within local communities such as community centres, primary care, hospitals and mental health services.
Collaboration: Work to ensure that responses are developed collaboratively with affected communities in a way that empowers and gives a voice to people most impacted by falling incomes, and does not judge or stigmatise. Consider how these responses can maximise the power within communities and individuals to advocate for themselves to drive the structural changes needed to reduce inequality.
Engage and involve: Engage and involve communities, the voluntary sector and community leaders in the assessment of current services and responses and the development of new ones.
For any individual, group or organisation:
Listen and engage: This report has shown the power of listening and giving a voice to people with lived experience. Fundamental to developing awareness is meaningful engagement with people with lived experience of poverty, understanding what poverty means for them, their health, and how they use and access support services.
Tackling Poverty Partnership: Join Tackling Poverty Partnership in order to find out more about local support and help and to connect with other organisations in Kirklees working with those experiencing poverty. Contact tom.mapplethorpe@kirklees.gov.uk to join the mailing list.
Cost of Living support: Promote the Cost of Living support pages with your workforce and residents
Routes to support: Wherever possible, provide multiple routes to support (face-to-face, telephone, online), to suit the needs and circumstances of the individual.
People who have experienced poverty or struggled to have their basic needs met may experience financial trauma. These traumatic events associated with money can carry into adult life and impact an individual's opportunities for employment, physical and mental health and social connection. Poverty aware practice mirrors the trauma informed approach in that is a strengths-based approach, which seeks to understand and respond to the impact of poverty on people's lives. Read more about The Role of Trauma Informed Care .
Read and share this report: This report highlights the lived experiences of those people living in poverty in Kirklees through no fault of their own. It demonstrates the difficulties people have in meeting their basic needs and the impact this has on their health and wellbeing. Keep the voices of those who have contributed to this report in mind in your interactions with people who may experience poverty and in any decision making.
Cost of Living practice guidance: The guidance is not intended to be used as a script, but a reference point for discovering what is important to people, asking what they feel motivated to act on and considering how we can connect people with community networks of support as much as possible. Things you could try include:
- Sharing the Cost of Living Practice Guidance with your frontline staff.
- Consider how you might adapt the guidance in a way that aligns with your work
- Facilitate a reflective session around how you and your team effectively respond to people who are impacted by the rising cost of living
- To find out more about this work please contact: CAS.Project@kirklees.gov.uk
Feedback from residents suggests that schools are a positive place of support for some families. There are things schools can support with that could alleviate some of the pressures including:
Signpost families to Kirklees cost of living support
Uniforms: Having a uniform policy minimises the financial burden on families. Raising awareness of the uniform exchange and encouraging parents to donate items once they no longer fit. The government has produced guidance on the issue: Cost of school uniforms
Free school meals: Proactively reaching out to ensure families are enrolled and accessing what they are entitled to, including the Holiday Activity and Food programme for school holiday periods, such as free school meals.
Period poverty: Schools can support with period poverty by applying for the period product scheme for schools and colleges
School trips: Ensuring low-cost options for trips are offered, trips are spaced out to help with affordability, and consider subsidised trips for low income students
World book day and other celebrations: Encourage the reuse and recycling of costumes and consider allowing costumes to be donated and held within schools so children can access them
After school clubs: Work to ensure that afterschool clubs are accessible, for example; reviewing any barriers to access such as kits, gear or other costs.
Present buying: While present giving to teachers is not expected by schools, it's not always actively discouraged. To combat this some schools are discouraging presents, and are suggesting donations for a local food bank, or a card or handwritten note instead.
Integrate support mechanisms for your staff who are working with residents who are experiencing poverty eg through supervision.
Explore and implement support mechanisms for staff who are experiencing difficulties with cost of living or financial exclusion, as part of workplace health and wellbeing programmes.
Individuals or organisations wanting to help people in poverty
Cost of Living Practice Guidance: Read the Cost of Living Practice Guidance for front line staff to find out more about having supportive and enabling conversations with Kirklees residents. To find out more about this work please contact CAS.Project@kirklees.gov.uk
Make Every Contact Count (MECC): The Making Every Contact Count online resource, has a range of information to support brief advice, support and signposting for people affected by cost of living and financial exclusion.
Volunteer: If you are an individual who would like to volunteer to support people, contact Third Sector Leaders: Find a volunteer role to find out more about how you can do this.
Food banks: Donate to your local foodbank, either directly or through supermarket collection points.
Third Sector Leaders: If you are a community group or third sector organisation, use the support of Third Sector Leaders.
Community Plus: Contact Kirklees Community Plus for support with your community group, including access to funding and activity promotion.
Ward Councillor: Get in touch with your local ward councillor to find out what's already happening in your area and how you can get involved locally. You can Search for a ward and see your local councillors or email placebasedworking@kirklees.gov.uk
Trauma informed approach: Take a trauma informed approach to working with people. You can read more about what this means and access resources to support you.
Continue to listen to lived experience: Listen to and co-produce with people with lived experience of poverty. Fundamental to developing awareness is meaningful engagement with people with lived experience of poverty, understanding what poverty means for them, their health, and how they use and access support services. People with lived experience have valuable insight that can help guide us on how to best help and support them.
What to do if you're experiencing financial difficulties
Cost of living website: Access the Kirklees Cost of Living website to see the full range of local and national support available.
If you would like to talk to somebody about what support is available to you, there are a range of options available. This includes:
- Local Welfare Provision
- Kirklees Citizens Advice and Law Centre
- Local support in your community via your Community Organisations. Learn more about Community directory to find local support.
- Kirklees Community Plus
- Social Prescribing Link Workers (accessed via GP)
- Find your local ward Councillor
- Better Off Kirklees which provides information and support around employment, debt and your benefit entitlements
- Works Better - support for people to get into work and find better work.
- Kirklees employment service support individuals experiencing mental ill health, and/or hidden disabilities, to work towards employment or education
