Merton Council has launched a new Employment Support Toolkit for Working with Parents which aims to help tackle child poverty.
Developed through partnership working with local children’s centres and partner agencies, the toolkit provides council staff and staff across the agencies with a guide to helping support families to move out of poverty.
The toolkit identifies the underlying issues that prevent parents from taking advantage of training and employment opportunities and puts in place a set of actions to help them overcome those barriers.
For some parents it might be a lack of information on childcare, sorting out their child’s schooling, lack of self-confidence or dealing with a housing crisis that works as a barrier to prevent them from moving forward into employment and training. The toolkit aims to deal with these issues and others by providing advice on how to stabilise income and take steps towards getting employment.
Merton Council’s cabinet member for children’s services, Councillor Debbie Shears said: “We are really excited about the toolkit as it provides staff with a coordinated, strategic and sustainable approach to breaking the cycle of child poverty in Merton.
‘We are determined to reduce the 20% of children and young people currently living below the poverty line and a major way of doing this is by helping to provide families with clear pathways into employment.’
To find out more about the toolkit please call 020 8545 3744.
ENDS
Note to Editor
In the pipeline for two years, the toolkit was developed through partnership working led by the Early Years, Childcare and Children’s centres teams in conjunction with many other council services (housing, welfare benefits, regeneration, extended services), Job Centre Plus, further education colleges, South London Learning Consortium, voluntary and community sector providers.