10 February 2022“Value your undervalued, we have the resources”
The collaborative Covid Realities Project has released its findings in their final report – Covid Realities Documenting Life on a Low Income During the Pandemic.
The University of York, University of Birmingham, and Child Poverty Action Group undertook the major collaborative research programme from 2020-2022, documenting life for those living on a low-income during the pandemic.
The research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, found families living on a low income were profoundly disadvantaged and Covid-19 further exacerbated the situation.
Recommendations have been made, which progressive local councils may choose to act upon including:
- Creating opportunities for people with lived experience in organisations to utilise and draw on a diversity of expertise, opening up non-typical entry routes into employment
- A right to flexible working and improved pay and working conditions (policy interventions which allow families to spend more time together, mandatory flexible working policies, more equal shared parental leave policies, and higher and more flexible up-front childcare allowances to balance work, care, and family life more successfully)
- Building capacity within communities to advocate for themselves and take part in participatory policy making
- An increased supply of affordable housing
- Increased access to public transport
Structural changes in the social security system and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were also called for.
