Women’s Support Network Policy Worker, Siobhán Harding, worked with Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick, Ulster University, Becca Bor, NI Anti-Poverty Network and Jude Hill from Save the Children NI to produce a Toolkit to encourage engagement with the draft Anti-Poverty Strategy which has recently closed. 

On behalf of the Women’s Regional Consortium, Siobhán used the Toolkit at a number of focus groups with women to discuss what is in the Strategy and to gather the views of women on whether the actions in the draft will make a difference to poverty levels in NI and what women think is missing from it.

Using the Toolkit has resulted in 145 responses to a simple feedback form on the content of the draft Anti-Poverty Strategy which Siobhán has summarised and used as part of the Women’s Regional Consortium response to the draft Anti-Poverty Strategy. 

The results from the feedback forms show that:

• The majority of respondents (78%) felt that the draft Anti-Poverty Strategy would make no difference to the financial hardship and poverty that people experience.  A further 15% reported they were unsure if the draft Anti-Poverty Strategy would make a difference and only 7% felt that it would make a difference.
• The majority of respondents (82%) rated the draft Anti-Poverty Strategy as ‘Poor’ with a further 15% rating it as ‘Average’.  Only 3% rated the draft Strategy as ‘Good’.
• Women were asked to provide suggestions for actions that could be taken to address the poverty they face and these included: free school meals for all pupils, bringing back the Holiday Hunger Scheme, introducing a price cap on school uniform costs, increasing the school uniform grant, increasing the threshold for help with school uniform grants, scrapping the two-child limit and ending the five-week wait in Universal Credit.

You can read a summary of the responses to the feedback forms using the Toolkit on the NI Anti-Poverty Network’s website here:

https://niapn.org/this-strategy-will-not-work-it-is-just-listing-things-are-already-in-place/