Tackling Poverty Together Strategy 2026-2036

The five thematic work areas identify where we will focus our activities to have the most impact locally, in direct response to what our residents have told us. Under each theme, we have set out priority actions to deliver meaningful progress in the short term, whilst developing more strategic and innovative actions for the longer term to address root causes and reduce inequalities. These themes and priority actions form the framework for the accompanying annual action plan.

1. Financial resilience and inclusion
   Strengthening people's financial security, building their financial resilience and removing barriers to accessing support

2. Better skills, good jobs and an inclusive economy
   Increasing digital skills, improving access to employability support and creating clearer pathways into learning and good jobs

3. Participation and voice
   Enabling meaningful resident participation in shaping services, maximising income, and campaigning for systemic change.

4. Access to high quality, holistic services and localized support
   Ensuring services are accessible, trauma-informed and person-centred, with increased localised support in underserved areas

5. Strategic focus and systems change
   Embedding poverty as a strategic priority across all organisations, driving cultural change and ensuring accountability

Theme 1: Financial resilience and financial inclusion

Financial resilience is about ensuring that residents have the knowledge, skills, resources and access to support that helps them manage their money effectively, weather financial shocks, and avoid or recover from crisis.

Financial inclusion ensures that everyone - regardless of background, circumstance or digital access - can participate in the financial systems that support stability and opportunity. This theme is foundational to much of our wider work on poverty prevention and protection.

Earlier intervention

Getting people to seek appropriate help earlier - before crisis hits - and improving the promotion, communication and signposting of support services so that people know what is available and how to access it.

Ethical financial options

Promoting ethical, affordable financial products such as Credit Unions as alternatives to high-cost credit and helping residents build financial resilience over time.

Community champions

Creating a network of community champions and local leaders who can provide trusted, accessible signposting and peer support within communities.

Removing barriers

Reducing geographic, digital, literacy and language barriers so all residents can access financial resilience and inclusion support, regardless of their circumstances or background.

Indicators of success:

• fewer residents experience crisis before accessing help
• increased referrals into specialistic support
• increase in Credit Union customers
• proactive addressing of barriers to access support

Year 1 priorities:

To add

Theme 2: Better skills, jobs and an inclusive economy

Better skills, good jobs and an inclusive economy are central to tackling the root causes of poverty. This theme focuses on ensuring that all residents - regardless of background or circumstance - can access the skills, opportunities and support they need to participate fully in the local economy and workforce. We want to see more opportunities for people to move into well paid and secure work, and opportunities to progress to further build financial resilience.  Working with local employers, anchor organisations, education, skills and training providers is key to the delivery of this theme.

Increased support for basic digital skills and digital inclusion

Supporting residents to develop the digital skills needed for everyday life, employment and access to services, with targeted provision for those most at risk of being left behind in an increasingly digital world.

Strengthened ESOL provision with extended reach

Expanding English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision to reach more residents, removing language as a barrier to employment, services and community participation.

More clear pathways in to learning and good employment

Creating clearer, better-signposted routes from education and training into good quality well-paid employment, with joined-up support at every stage of the journey.

Increase engagement of employability support needs across all interactions

Embedding awareness of employability support needs across all touchpoints - from health to housing - so that opportunities to connect people with skills and employment support are never missed.

Indicators of success:

• digital skills and digital inclusion provision is increased
• routes into learning and work feel clearer and more joined up
• ESOL provision is increased
• routes into employability support are increased and strengthened

Year 1 priorities:

To add

Theme 3: Participation and voice

Enabling meaningful participation and voice is central to tackling poverty with dignity. This theme ensures that residents - especially those with lived experience of poverty - have genuine influence over the services, systems and decisions that shape their lives.

Basic needs

Enabling meaningful participation in developing services to ensure basic needs are met, such as quality food and affordable warm housing.

Accessible services

Ensuring services are accessible and inclusive for all, especially groups who are at increased risk of poverty and face specific barriers to accessing support.

Maximising income

Shaping services that maximise income through access to benefits and welfare rights advice, and improving the communications and information provided to promote and access these services.

Campaigning and lobbying

Campaigning and lobbying at a local and national level to amplify the voices and insights of Gateshead residents, ensuring their experiences shape policy and practice beyond our borough.

Inclusive employment

Enabling residents to influence approaches to inclusive access to good quality jobs and reducing discrimination.

Indicators of success:

• more services and support are designed or reshaped by people who use them
• residents influence inclusive recruitment and employment practices
• services are more inclusive and accessible
• Gateshead voices are amplified in campaigning and lobbying activities

Year 1 priorities:

To add

Theme 4 - Access to high quality, accessible, holistic services and localised support

Ensuring that residents can access the right support at the right time is fundamental to tackling poverty effectively. This theme focuses on making services more joined-up, trauma-informed and locally accessible - so that no one is left without help because of where they live or how services are organised.

Tell it once

Test a "tell it once" approach, sharing information across aligned services to reduce the burden of retelling personal circumstances and getting people to the right support sooner.

Connected roles

Developing and aligning roles and resources such as social prescribers, link workers and other local connector roles to provide personalised financial resilience support and referrals into services alongside holistic support.

Trauma-informed practice

Embedding consistent, trauma-informed, person-centred support practices across organisations through training and support to staff and volunteers.

Localised support

Increasing the localised support offer by providing key services in communities, especially in rural and underserved wards where access to the civic centre and wider services is most challenging.

Improve service navigation

Establish digital and print tools for individuals and organisations to direct people to the most appropriate financial support services according to their needs and situation.

Indicators of success:

• people report feeling respected and listened to when accessing services
• new tools enable more people find the right support first time
• data and information sharing between partners in enhanced to support the 'tell it once'  approach
• increase in locally delivered support services

Year 1 priorities:

To add

Theme 5: Strategic focus, organisational and systems change

Lasting change requires more than individual interventions — it demands that organisations across Gateshead embed poverty as a strategic priority, build their capacity to respond, and create genuine mechanisms for people with lived experience to shape the systems that affect their lives.

Partnership development

Continuing to build and support the Tackling Poverty Together Partnership and organisational commitments to tackle poverty as a strategic priority and through decision-making processes.

Control and choice

Work to ensure families and residents in financial hardship have more control and choices over the support and services available to them.

Borough-wide training

Developing a borough-wide training and development offer including Poverty Awareness training, Unconscious Bias and Stigma, and Socio-Economic Duty for all organisations, staff and volunteers.

Voice and influence

Creating robust mechanisms to ensure that the voices of people with lived and living experience can influence all policies, strategies, services and decisions affecting them.

Poverty audits

Conducting poverty audits of key services, systems and processes and undertaking improvements on the key issues identified.

Innovation

Cross-system design sprints, informed by and involving those with living and lived experience to develop future actions to address the root causes of poverty.

Indicators of success:

• partners can demonstrate real organisational change and the impact of their commitments
• increase in poverty-trained workforce - less stigma, more dignity
• people with lived and living experience can influence policies, services and decisions affecting them
• longer term work to address root causes of poverty is developed and underway

Year 1 priorities:

To add