Council areas with highest child poverty levels to be focus of more action

The City of Glasgow Council has announced the ten wards with the highest levels of child poverty that will be the focus of actions to help the city’s poorest families.

The areas mentioned will benefit from work with parents who have a child aged five or under to try to prevent them from sinking into further financial problems. Efforts to improve children’s prospects have already started in Southside Central, Calton, and Govan under a project called Glasgow’s Child Poverty Pathfinder.

Below are the full 10 areas—known as ‘booster wards’—where poverty is highest. The work is part of the wide-ranging measures covered in Glasgow’s local child poverty action report, which councillors agreed to publish at the city administration committee yesterday.

According to the report, the council, health board, and other partners have been involved in trying to “mitigate, prevent, and challenge child poverty.”

Actions include 79 GPs having a money advice worker in the surgery once a week or fortnight, which has led to 936 adult disability claims over the last year. More than half of those people who received assistance have children. Nearly 900 pregnant women attending hospital appointments received cash up to £50 last year each – with a total of £38,963 for travel, food or clothes handed out. Longer-term support was also provided.

Glasgow City Council treasurer Ricky Bell presented a paper on the Local Child Poverty Action Report to councillors at yesterday’s meeting.

SNP councillor Bell said: “This is our sixth report and it highlights the extensive work undertaken to secure the strategic alignment of the city child poverty approach within the city’s community plan and ensures that child poverty is no longer on the agenda but it is actually the agenda with city partners committed to playing their part and being held jointly accountable for this.”

Across Glasgow it is estimated 24,419 children were in poverty in July this year according to the report. The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 has set targets for 2030 that less than 10 percent of children are in relative poverty, under five percent of children are in absolute poverty and fewer than five per cent are in persistent poverty.

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