Child Poverty Action Plan

Many parents are able to progress towards, into and within work with ease and with little support however personal circumstances, such as caring responsibilities and health are barriers to finding work, as are individual factors such as lack of qualifications and work experience.

Being in employment does not guarantee a route out of poverty. Parents need to be able to access high quality jobs with a decent rate of pay and with enough hours to meet their family’s needs. Over half of families living in poverty have at least one parent working.

Improve employment support for parents

We will:

• provide parents who are not working with the advice and support they need to help them move towards and into work including help to tackle barriers such as housing; money issues or health problems
• improve access to childcare
• support parents in areas where unemployment is higher to become registered childminders
• support and up-skill parents in low skilled/low income jobs to improve their career prospects and increase income

Continue to improve the outcomes for young people when they leave school

We will:

• further develop our youth employability support to ensure all young people (regardless of where they live or other circumstances) can achieve their true potential beyond school and progress into and within work
• establish a partnership process to ensure care experienced young people are offered appropriate work experience and employment opportunities within key local agencies including South Lanarkshire Council, NHS Lanarkshire and other community planning partners

‘Building’ opportunities

Working with seven other local authorities, we will take steps to make sure that when we are building new facilities, roads, schools, transport systems and so on, that we are creating opportunities such as jobs, work experience placements for young people and other community benefits

Work with local employers to tackle low pay

We will:

• promote the Living Wage across Lanarkshire. (The Living Wage is currently £9.00/hr and is updated yearly to reflect increased living costs. It is not the same as the national living wage which is currently £8.21.)
• take steps, along with NHS Lanarkshire, to reduce levels of underemployment amongst key staff groups (underemployment is working fewer hours than a worker would like or need)
• build on our targeted recruitment roadshows to encourage low income parents, into council employment opportunities, working in partnership to widen participation from underrepresented groups