Public Service Boards’ responses to Child Poverty in local Draft Wellbeing Plans
Public Service Boards across Wales have been publishing their local Well-being Plans in recent weeks.
Public Services Boards (PSBs) aim to improve the economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being in its area by strengthening joint working across all public services in Wales. The Boards were established by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 3025. Each Board will assessment the state of well-bing in its area and set objectives to maximise contribution to the well-being goals.
Children in Wales, along with the End Child Poverty Network Cymru was interested to learn where child poverty sits within the Plans, so we did an overview of all the draft plans published last year. A Briefing Paper on our findings was produced which can be found here.
Please contact Cheryl.martin@childreninwales.org.uk if you have any questions about this work.
Cwm Taf
References to CYP – 49 and Poverty – 17
Cwm Taf’s Wellbeing Plan is written around 3 draft Wellbeing Objectives:
- To promote safe, confident, strong, and thriving communities improving the well-being of residents and visitors and building on our community assets.
- To help people live long and healthy lives and overcome any challenges.
- To grow a strong local economy with sustainable transport that attracts people to live, work and play in Cwm Taf.
The Plan uses the Assets and Challenges model of well-being (Dodge et al, 2012) and draws on information from other Assessments undertaken in the County, eg the Population Needs Assessment and the Community Safety Strategic Assessment.
The Plan discusses each draft Wellbeing Objective and how it was informed by the Wellbeing Assessments. It then sets out how the Objective could be achieved through actions in the short term (up to 5 years), medium term (5-10 years) and long term (10-30 years).
For example, Draft Objective 1 discusses ACEs and the need for prevention and minimising the impact of ACEs. Actions they could take to achieve this are set out as short term – develop Community Zones as an area or place based approach focussing support to improve outcomes for people experiencing ‘the greatest challenges’. The approach would be initially targeted at communities in Gurnos and Upper Rhondda Fach.
Community Zones are also mentioned in Draft Objective 2, as being key to this objective, particularly in relation to the First 1000 Days.
Short term actions for Draft Objective 3 include:
- Deliver regeneration in areas covered by the Metro.
- Developing community transport projects across the Valleys.
- New employability programmes, to include providing a gateway to skills, experience, qualifications and employment, supported by Community Zones and the anti-poverty programmes of the Welsh Government, along with higher and further education.
The Plan includes an appended Logic Model flowchart showing the development of the well-being objectives, considering assets, challenges and outcomes. There were also mentions of rural poverty and fuel poverty.
There is no reference to children’s rights in the Plan
