Greenwich Supports strategy

People can experience poverty temporarily, recurrently, or persistently, with resources and needs fluctuating. A dynamic view of poverty focuses on prevention and providing routes out of it. 

Our challenge

How might we take a long-term and dynamic approach to prevent people from falling into poverty and offer them routes out of it? How do we build on the strengths and capabilities individuals already have? 

Intended outcomes

Improved individual and household capabilities: 

• Control and capabilities: increased positive feedback on support, greater confidence in seeking help and reduced reliance on crisis relief (such as food banks, temporary accommodation). 

• Social stability: better ability to form and maintain healthy relationships. 

• Income: higher income and benefits through effective intervention. 

• Employment and pay: lower unemployment and economic inactivity, with increased pay and employment rates. 

• Health: reduced disparities in life expectancy. Reduced number of years in ill health and mental health, risk of death in childhood, and childhood obesity rates. 

• Housing: more access to safe and affordable housing. Fewer residents seeking homelessness support and temporary accommodation.  

Greater community power:

• Local support: more diverse, high-quality help locally to grow capabilities and improve individual health and wellbeing. 

• Community Engagement: a thriving and supportive community with stronger partnerships. 

• Stronger community assets: stronger public assets and social infrastructure to enable community to take action. 

How we will do this

Priority 2.1: coordinate early intervention between support services within the Royal Borough of Greenwich and in the community to help people grow capabilities

• Help residents grow capabilities and thrive after stabilising their crisis. This includes fostering financial resilience, well-being, stable housing, and life skills, promoting access to education, employment and community connections. 

• Address digital exclusion and encourage social activity.  

• Take an equity and proportionate universal approach to review and design services to be universally accessible but scaled to match needs and disadvantages, while staying within the council’s budget. 

• Coordinate local support networks in key resource areas like food, childcare, skills, housing and digital inclusion to reduce poverty, building on the success of the food response group.  

• Simplify access to multiple services and collaborate on designing user-friendly services, digital products and content. 

• To improve life skills training and managing money within schools – aligning with the Children and Young People's Plan.

Priority 2.2: work as part of the community to coordinate hyper-local responses to support people in helping themselves

• Put community-led responses and models front and centre in reducing poverty. 

• Nurture community power and enhance local networks and assets.  

• Expand local organisations’ capacity and flexibility by transferring council spending power and decision-making to the community. 

• Embed a participatory approach to ensure community voices are heard. The aim is to ensure power is equitably distributed, and that strong relationships with the council support a resilient volunteer and community sector ecosystem - Community Resource Strategy. 

• Consolidate borough-wide analysis on resident needs and asset mapping into practical tools.  

• Use existing partnership arrangements and structure to support the delivery of Greenwich Supports and create an action plan. 

• Convene new partnership to turbo-charge responses where gaps have been identified. 

• Discover and highlight successful community-led poverty prevention and crisis relief efforts. 

• Partner with key community players to bid for funding and enhance local poverty responses and assets so that there are informal and friendly places people can go to.   

Priority 2.3: embed Greenwich Supports principles in the council decision-making framework and apply the social economic duty to all policies and decisions

• Ensure Greenwich Supports principles and priorities are understood when drafting new strategy and policy. 

• Use the next available opportunity to review existing strategies to align with Greenwich Supports.  

• Review how to appropriately embed the socio-economic duty into existing governance practices.