Supporting good health and improving financial wellbeing
Dudley Council is looking to launch a strategy to promote good financial wellbeing and mitigate poverty by addressing the underlying causes.
Dudley, like the rest of the country, is faced with ongoing cost-of-living pressures and the authority and its partners recognises that financial wellbeing and health are intertwined. Poor financial wellbeing can have a negative effect on an individual’s wellbeing, and poor health can lead to poverty.
The Financial Wellbeing and Mitigating Poverty Strategy will take a whole system approach with an aim to improve quality of life for residents, alleviating pressure on public services by addressing the root causes of financial hardship and fostering economic resilience and social equity, with the aim of improving overall community prosperity and wellbeing.
It will focus on three key elements: preventing poverty, helping people out of poverty and mitigating the impact of poverty.
Specific activity will include providing further support to babies in their first 1001 days, improving school readiness and educational achievement for children eligible for free school meals, reducing tooth decay among children and reducing teen pregnancy rates.
The authority and its partners are aiming to improve people’s skills and employability, including increasing apprenticeship opportunities, improving opportunities for young people not in education, employment, or training and improving health at work so that more people feel supported in returning to work.
The strategy also aims to expand the support available to people to help them claim benefits they are entitled to, provide funding through the Household Support Fund to vulnerable households, explore new ways to help people budget better and work towards long-term financial stability, create a sustainable food partnership which looks beyond emergency provision, reduce furniture poverty by recycling donated items and reducing waste, create a one stop energy advice hub to support with information and issues around fuel poverty.
Councillor James Clinton, cabinet member for public health, said:
“Dudley should be a place where everyone can experience a decent quality of life, including access to essential items, clean and safe housing, healthy food, transport, and a job that pays a living wage.
“We know that issues around poverty and health and wellbeing are all intertwined. There is not one single solution to this, which is why we’ve produced this muliti-agency strategy. By working across sectors and partnerships we hope to create a way of supporting and empowering people to develop economic resilience and help them feel independent and yet supported.”