What if people who have directly faced poverty were involved in the decisions relating to addressing issues that keep people trapped in poverty?
This is the question we will be exploring to establish Hartlepool’s Poverty Truth Commission.
Developing relationships encourages wisdom to be released. Real solutions to poverty can be found by working together. This approach can have profound and lasting effects on the people involved.
Initial
Meeting
We will come to you or meet somewhere you feel comfortable.
Meet
Others
Meet regularly with other potential commissioners.
Join The
Commission
The commission starts in October 2023.
Poverty Truth Commission- An introduction.
The Black Civil Rights Movement in the USA would not have made progress had white people dominated its leadership. Similarly, the feminist movement would not have achieved what it has, had men been running the show. And so a movement to tackle poverty needs to have people who experience it at its heart if real change is to be achieved.
The Story to Date
From the Poverty Truth Commission Network website:
In 2009, the first Poverty Truth Commission was launched in Scotland. Hosted by Faith in Community Scotland, it grew out of a belief that the wisdom, experience and understanding of people who struggled against poverty were vital in making decisions about poverty.
Word about the impact of the Poverty Truth Commission in Scotland soon spread. There was something about this approach that intrigued others and left them asking the question, ‘What if we did a Poverty Truth Commission around here?’
Between 2015 – 2020, 10 new locations hosted commissions and there are more on the way. Initially, the Network was incubated as part of Faith in Community Scotland. Then, in 2019, the Poverty Truth Network became a separate charity.
What to expect:
The first phase: October 2023 – April 2024
We will primarily focus on building relationships and supporting a group of civic and business leaders and a group of Hartlepool people who have lived experiences of poverty and disadvantage. the two separate groups will spend time ‘getting to know each other’, develop their understanding of the values and components of a Poverty Truth Commission, and prepare for the launch of the Commission. This phase will continue for approximately six months.
The second phase: May 2024 – April 2024
Thrive will facilitate an initial meeting to identify areas of work and establish working group arrangements. From April 2024 to April 2025, monthly commissioners’ meetings will be held to build relationships, support working groups, encourage one-to-one meetings, and plan a closing event. The goal is to embed the Poverty Truth approach.
May 2025
A closing event will be held to communicate the findings of the commission with the wider public. This will include the work carried out in the working groups and the effect that the process has had on commissioners.
Work may continue to help commissioners embed what they have learnt into their communities, organisations and institutions and through communicating the findings of the commission through annual events and reports.
Nothing About Us Without Us is For Us: The Poverty Truth Commission approach.
The Poverty Truth Commission is a unique and powerful way of developing new insights and initiatives to tackle poverty, developed in Glasgow and Leeds. The key principle behind a Poverty Truth Commission is that decisions about poverty must involve people who directly face poverty. Its uniqueness is derived from the fact that half of its members are people with senior roles in civic and business life in Hartlepool – and the other half are people with direct personal experience of what it is like to live in poverty in the area. The process is a culmination of relationship building, fact-finding and deep thinking over an 18-month period between people with a direct experience of poverty and civic and business leaders within the Borough. The aim is to ensure that people who have experienced poverty first-hand are at the heart of how the Borough thinks and acts in tackling poverty and inequality.
Hartlepool people will be given the chance to relate their personal experiences of struggling against poverty. By creating safe spaces for people to talk about their experiences and offer opportunities for those making and influencing decisions to listen. It is hoped that the project will have a deepened understanding of the difficult and entrenched issues of poverty, improve perceptions and challenge stereotyping, and lead to better decision-making by the Boroughs leaders across business, public and voluntary sectors.
What could it do for Hartlepool?
Hartlepool is experiencing increasing inequality within the Borough. The Council faces huge challenges with continuous and sustained reductions to local authority and other public sector budgets, whilst at the same time demand for services continues to rise.
Despite the Government’s commitment to eradicating child poverty by 2020, millions of families in the UK are unable to heat homes, pay rent, or buy essentials for their children. The prevalence and impact of poverty on a local, regional and national level is continuing to rise, with the North East seeing the UK’s biggest increase in child poverty.
In recognition of this and the impact on family incomes of the pandemic, changes to national insurance levels and inflation, the Committee identified ‘Child and Family Poverty in Hartlepool’ as a critically important, crosscutting, priority issue for investigation.
This is an opportunity to explore what can be done to ensure that the wealth and opportunities that are being brought to the Borough provide real and lasting benefits to those experiencing entrenched poverty. It will seek to understand how can those who live with poverty on a daily basis become genuine stakeholders in shaping the future of Hartlepool.
The Poverty Truth Commission will provide a space for those who play key roles in civic and business life in the Borough to work alongside those whose voices and insights are rarely heard in seeking to find common solutions, over an 18-month period.