North-east England to unveil £55m package to tackle child poverty

A £55m package of measures to tackle the "staggering" levels of child poverty in north-east England is to be unveiled at a summit on Monday.

The announcement includes an extension of a scheme that allows young people under 21 to travel on public transport for £1 and a £50m investment programme aimed at helping people to find and stay in work.

There will also be a £1.4m investment in helping parents and children. It includes the offer of financial advice at the school gate, baby boxes for new parents and free after-school clubs and learning sessions.

The package will be announced by the north-east mayor, Kim McGuinness, at the region's first child poverty summit.

In a speech in Sunderland McGuinness will say that the measures are a major step forward in making the region "the home of real opportunity".

She will say: "For too long, our destiny – and those of families in our region – has been set by Westminster and Whitehall making decisions on our behalf, and the abject failure of markets to bring opportunity, jobs and investment we know people need.

"The north-east has had the unwelcome tag of the highest child poverty rates for the past 25 years. Now we say: enough is enough. We're making progress to help families and young people in the here and now, and putting in the foundations to help the next generation of families – the infrastructure of opportunity.

"Our measures will help people find work, cut the cost of travel and ensure children have the very best start in life."

Tracey Dixon is the leader of South Tyneside council and the cabinet member for education, inclusion and skills at the north-east combined authority. She said the levels of child poverty in the north-east were "staggering".

Dixon added: "It is impossible not to feel emotional when you hear the conditions that many of our families are living in.

"While there is a huge amount of work going on to alleviate poverty across the north-east, instead of dealing with the effects of poverty, we need to stop people being in poverty in the first place."

The £50m investment programme, funded by the national government, aims to help an estimated 13,500 people who face barriers to staying in work because of health issues or disability.

The latest figures show there are 107,100 people in the region who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness.

Backers of the programme say it will match people to job opportunities and work with their employers to help them stay in work.

The £1 public travel scheme for young people aged under 21 is an extension of a scheme that had been scheduled to end this year. It will apply to buses, the metro and the Shields ferry and will now carry on for at least a year and, McGuinness hopes, until 2028.

It has been estimated that almost one in three babies, children and young people live in poverty in the north-east.

An analysis for the TUC published in June suggested that there had been a 44% increase in child poverty for working households in north-east England since 2010.

It said: "A toxic combination of wage stagnation, rising insecure work and cuts to social security has had a devastating impact on family budgets."

About 300 delegates from business, campaigns and the voluntary sector are due to gather at the child poverty summit on Monday.