Council chiefs in South Tyneside have unveiled a new child poverty strategy to mitigate, reduce and prevent the issue - the first of its kind in the North East.
It comes as data shows South Tyneside is one of the most deprived communities in the country.
It comes as data shows South Tyneside is one of the most deprived communities in the country.
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00:00I mean, just from a South Tyneside perspective, I mean, reducing child poverty is a key mission
00:04for us here in South Tyneside. And our child poverty strategy is going to be the first
00:09in the region. I mean, we are an area where deprivation is extremely high, we're the third
00:13of all young people actually living in poverty. And what we are doing to, what we want to
00:18do in South Tyneside is to eradicate child poverty. So our strategy is our first step
00:23towards that. And I mean, it also links in with the North East Combined Authority, with
00:28their four key missions. So you know, it's about working solely as a region, sorry,
00:34solely as a local authority, but also from a regional perspective.
00:39Paul, have you got anything to add?
00:40Yeah, I mean, totally agree with what Tracey's just said there. I mean, the thing about it,
00:46where we've got to be proud in South Tyneside, that we are the first. And the thing we do,
00:51and we don't just do the talk, we do the walk. And that's why, you know, we are putting together
00:59like a strategy. And it's not just a short term, we will, you know, it is a strategy,
01:05which is we will keep monitoring it. And, you know, for five years, we'll, you know, we'll
01:14come back and see that what we did put in place has, you know, has kind of worked,
01:20you know, I mean, it's, and we won't be waiting for the five years, we'll be working on it
01:26constantly.
01:27What's important as well for us in South Tyneside, this actually builds on the work
01:30that we've actually been doing over the last five years, where we had our poverty commission,
01:35we had two anti-poverty summits, we had our child poverty summit in October.
01:39You know, so we had our partners around the table. So the feedback that we got from them,
01:43has actually worked into our strategy. You know, you have to bear in mind, we can't do
01:47this alone, we have to work in partners because the magnitude is so high. So from a South
01:52Tyneside perspective, you know, we are working together as partners with our agencies and
01:57delivering on our child strategy.