By Professor Matt Ashton, Director of Public Health for Liverpool and Co-Chair of Cheshire and Merseyside’s All Together Fairer Board
Recently, colleagues from across Cheshire and Merseyside came together for Beyond the Limit, a conference focused on improving outcomes for children and families through collective action on child and family poverty.
Representatives from public health, local government, the NHS, Citizens Advice, education, the voluntary and community sector and many other partner organisations shared evidence, experiences and ideas about how we can work together to reduce poverty and improve life chances. Throughout the day, there was a remarkable consistency in the messages we heard:
Poverty affects every aspect of life
Poverty is never simply about income. More than 100,000 children and young people under 16 across Cheshire and Merseyside are currently living in poverty, with over 60% coming from working families. This has a massive impact on health and wellbeing, educational attainment, housing security, employment opportunities and life expectancy. It shapes the environments in which children grow up and the opportunities they have to thrive.
Behind every statistic is a child, a family and a set of circumstances that deserve our understanding and action.
The insights shared by Citizens Advice colleagues highlighted a growing demand for crisis support, rising levels of debt and the strong links between financial hardship and poor mental health. Whilst many families continue to face significant challenges, the data also demonstrated the difference that early intervention and tailored support can make. If we are serious about improving outcomes, we must recognise the complexity of the lives people are living.
Evidence matters when it drives change
Understanding poverty in all its complexity allows us to make better decisions and target support more effectively.
Whether we are talking about urban communities, coastal communities, rural communities or small towns, context matters. But data alone does not improve outcomes, evidence also matters most when it informs policy, shapes commissioning decisions and helps us design better services for children and families. The true value lies in the ability to drive action and improve people’s lives.
The discussions also highlighted the potential for better use of real-time data and intelligence to identify emerging pressures earlier, strengthen evidence-based advocacy and ensure support reaches families before problems escalate.
Lived experience must shape our response
As was reflected during the conference, ‘nothing about us, without us’ should remain a guiding principle for anyone seeking to improve outcomes for children and families.
Families understand the barriers they face better than anyone. Professional expertise remains vital, but the best solutions emerge when lived experience and professional knowledge come together.
If we genuinely want to tackle inequalities, we must ensure that the voices of children, young people and families help shape the decisions we make.
Progress is possible when we work together
Whilst the scale of the challenge remains significant, Cheshire and Merseyside is not starting from scratch.
In 2024, Directors of Public Health and Population Health joined forces with Directors of Children’s Services, the Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise Children’s and Young People’s Network, Voluntary Sector North West, NHS Cheshire and Merseyside and the Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership to publish a joint statement calling for urgent, coordinated action.
At the heart of that statement was a shared ambition: that no child in Cheshire and Merseyside should be living in poverty.
This conference also provided an opportunity to recognise the leadership of Dave Bradburn, Lead Director of Public Health for Child and Family Poverty on behalf of Champs Directors, alongside the many organisations and individuals who continue to champion this agenda across our subregion.
Through collaborative leadership and partnership working, Cheshire and Merseyside has helped shape wider conversations around child poverty. Last year, colleagues welcomed the Government’s Child Poverty Unit to Sefton to hear directly from families about their lived experiences of poverty. Those conversations ensured that the realities facing children and families across Cheshire and Merseyside were reflected in national discussions.
It was also encouraging to see Cheshire and Merseyside recognised within the Government’s Child Poverty Strategy. That recognition belongs to everyone who has contributed to this work and demonstrates what can happen when systems come together around a shared goal.
Importantly, we have also begun translating ambition into practical action. Work across Cheshire and Merseyside to increase access to free school meals has helped ensure that more children and families receive the support they are entitled to. We’ve also been working with partners to make it easier for eligible families to access Healthy Start support, recognising that sometimes the biggest barriers are not a lack of provision, but how accessible and understandable our systems are.
These interventions matter because they improve people’s everyday lives, but they also demonstrate the value of partnership working.
What happens next?
Tackling child and family poverty requires sustained effort over time. Whilst crisis support remains essential, the conference reinforced the need to focus on sustainable, long-term solutions that prevent families from reaching crisis in the first place. The Cheshire and Merseyside Framework for Action provides a shared focus for that work, recognising the need to:
- maximise household income
- support children, young people and families
- build inclusive places.
There are no quick fixes. However, we already have many of the ingredients needed to make progress: strong partnerships, growing evidence, examples of good practice and a shared commitment to improving outcomes. The challenge now is to maintain momentum.
We must continue to keep child and family poverty high on the agenda. We must turn evidence into action, strengthen partnerships and ensure that lived experience continues to shape our decisions.
I would like to thank our colleagues at Citizens Advice across Cheshire and Merseyside for convening this important conversation and continuing to shine a light on the realities facing children and families across our region.
Poverty and health inequalities are not inevitable. Whilst no single intervention will solve child and family poverty, the cumulative impact of hundreds of decisions, actions and partnerships across Cheshire and Merseyside has the potential to improve life chances for thousands of children and families.
To learn more about Cheshire and Merseyside’s work on child and family poverty, please visit: https://champspublichealth.com/child-and-family-poverty/.
