The London Child Poverty Pledge
London's
Children: Our Future Capital (19 November 2008)
This document contains details of a new joint target for tackling child poverty
in London and identifies the priorities and actions that will accelerate
progress towards this goal.
London Child
Poverty Pledge video (DCSF YouTube September 2008)
A high quality version of this video can also be viewed on Vimeo.
The London Child Poverty Pledge is designed to raise awareness of the contribution people can make in their own organisations and jobs to drive action to reduce the capital's high and persistent child poverty rates.
The need for action
A shocking 31% of children in Inner London are living in poverty. Growing up in poverty means living with disadvantage and deprivation. It damages children's experiences of childhood, and puts them at risk of poor outcomes in later life. Whilst child poverty exists, our children, our society, and our economy will not reach their full potential.
How will the pledge help?
The pledge enables organisations to make a strong and lasting commitment to tackling child poverty by signing up to a set of actions to improve the services they provide for disadvantaged families and assessing how their own employment practices can be improved to ensure that they are family-friendly, and enable local parents to succeed in work. It is aimed at any organisation that delivers services for families in London including regional arms of delivery agencies; local authorities; children's services; health services; housing services; employment services; colleges; schools; children's centres and any other public service, social enterprises and third sector providers
What does the pledge involve?
The London Child Poverty Pledge sets out a number of high-level actions which all organisations can take to improve the impact of their work on parental employment and child poverty. Each organisation must:
- Specify at least one new thing that they will do to deliver each action in the pledge
- Complete the Pledge form to explain what will be done
- Send the completed and signed form to the Child Poverty Unit
The London Child Poverty Summit
Organisations that sign up to the pledge before the end of October will be invited to join Ministers, the Mayor and Child Poverty Champions from across London at the London Child Poverty Summit on 19 November.
The Summit will be an opportunity to celebrate commitments made through the
pledge. Organisations will share and learn from good practice, to support them
as they move towards delivering their pledge commitments.
This page was last updated on 28 November 2008
