Jessica Kennedy of the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum celebrates  the legacy of the Women on the Move Awards

On Thursday 6th March, 260 people gathered at the Southbank Centre to celebrate the achievements of inspirational women from refugee and migrant communities. The Women on the Move Awards, part of the WOW Festival and supported by Barrow Cadbury Trust are held to recognise the outstanding contributions that refugee women make to empowering and integrating their communities.  My organisation – The Forum – co-hosts the Awards alongside Migrants Rights Network and UNHCR.

The Awards are more than just a one night event, and aim to make an ongoing and lasting difference to the winners and their communities. The women gain recognition for, and raise the profile of, their work.  In addition, a fellowship provides access to high quality leadership development and help to build a network of exceptional women and the organisations they work with.

A month after the awards, as the dust has settled and the plaudits die down, what has changed?

Connections

Lilian Seenoi, who founded the only migrant forum in Derry-Londonderry from her kitchen table, won the Women of the Year Award for her work to ensure migrants and refugees can access support. The North-West Migrants Forum brings together diverse migrant groups and local communities which have suffered years of tension. The Awards have catapulted Lilian onto an international stage – she has just come back from Brussels, where she contributed to a public debate at the European Union on practical steps to challenge the poor treatment of migrants in Greece. She is shortly to fly to Turin, Italy, to take part in a European-wide project to tackle hate speech, before another visit to Brussels. All that before running a festival in June to bring together communities building on Derry-Londonderry’s place as UK City of Culture in 2013.

International attention also followed Tatiana Garavito, winner of the Young Woman of the Year Award for her tireless and determined work with the Latin American community in London. El Espectador, a mainstream newspaper in Colombia, published an article about Tatiana.  A short film commissioned by the Women on the Move Awards about Tatiana’s work will be shown at a documentary film festival in Colombia.  After the Awards Tatiana said they were “an amazing opportunity for us migrant women to show the world what we can achieve given a fair chance”.

Those who attended the Awards also found powerful connections. My personal highlight of the night was seeing, in the crush of the after-party, members of a collective of domestic workers connecting with a woman who works with Lilian and the North-West Migrants Forum and is trying to tackle exploitative labour practices in Northern Ireland. This fledgling relationship is continuing and already leading to mutual support, learning and, ultimately, stronger and more effective organisations.

Interest

Although the Awards receive little coverage from major news organisations, the winners and their organisations gain interest from a variety of other sources. Diana Nammi, who founded the Iranian-Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) as a reaction to ‘honour’ killing and violence, was given special recognition for her tireless work. On the night, IKWRO’s twitter followers notably increased.  All our winners have been inundated with requests for interviews and articles.

Films that Women on the Move made about the Award winners have reached 5,561 viewers – spreading these courageous stories even further. As organisers, we are so glad to see how the Awards create a platform for extraordinary women to shout about their own and their organisations’ great work.  Tatiana was able to highlight the invisibility of the Latin American community in London: “with this [attention], the whole community get the recognition that we are campaigning for”.

Confidence

Perhaps most important, the women tell me, is an improvement in their confidence. Standing on stage as an Award winner, being celebrated for your work and able to share your story from a place of strength, can have a huge personal impact. From what we already know about these courageous and determined women, the only way from here is up.

We also know this is just the start of working relationships that benefit us all. As Diana, one of the award-winners, said after the ceremony, “it has been a huge pleasure – and I hope this will be a start for partnership work for the future”. The Forum hopes the Awards continue to impact throughout the year and look forward to seeing all our supporters – and more extraordinary women – in 2015! There may be only one day to celebrate international women, but Women on the Move are changing lives everyday.

As new reports highlight the increasing inequality in the UK economy; cities, towns and boroughs across the country have united to tackle issues of social exclusion in a new national network set up by the Leader of Birmingham City Council and the Bishop of Birmingham.

While in recent months economic statistics seem to be indicating a more positive outlook for the UK economy, it is clear that a significant proportion of our population are still not feeling the benefit of this improvement.  Only yesterday the Equality Trust released a report highlighting that the gap between rich and poor was rising and that inequality was costing the country £39bn a year.  Figures from Oxfam also released yesterday highlighted that the five richest families in the UK are wealthier than the bottom 20% of the entire population and the gap between the rich and the rest has grown significantly over the last two decades.

Continuing and increasing inequality has the potential to have a  long term damaging effect on our population, impacting on a wide spectrum of social outcome.   Duncan Exley from the Equality Trust highlighted it perfectly when he said yesterday “We know that inequality is a major cause of social problems from crime, to poor health to low educational performance, and that it is psychologically scarring, reducing trust in strangers and isolating individuals”.

Local authorities in towns and cities across the country are grappling with these issues every day.  However the challenge of dealing with social exclusion has been made more difficult because of the reduction in resources.  It is  this context that makes the launch of the National Social Inclusion Network and accompanying Birmingham Declaration so timely.

Led by the Bishop of Birmingham,  Birmingham’s Social Inclusion Process has over the past two years been trying to develop ways of dealing with social exclusion in the city.  The process quickly identified that the task of creating more inclusive cities has moved beyond what local or national government can do on their own, and that there was a need to build a network of local authorities to work together, share knowledge and understanding, as well as establishing a collective voice to challenge the Government to bring about changes that will make dealing with these issues easier.

This awareness resulted in the first National Social Inclusion Symposium being hosted by Birmingham City Council’s Leader, Cllr Sir Albert Bore and The Rt Revd David Urquhart, Bishop of Birmingham,  funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, in September 2013.  At this event 15 local authorities from across the country agreed to establish a National Social Inclusion Network and to sign a declaration to demonstrate their commitment.

By signing the declaration, participating authorities have agreed to:

• Be part of the National Social Inclusion Network
• Share learning and develop joint campaigning on key issues around social inclusion
• Build a strong collective voice to articulate the arguments for social inclusion for all communities across the country
• Identify action that can be taken around issues of shared concern

The authorities that have signed the declaration are Barrow-in-Furness, Birmingham, Bristol, Islington, Knowsley, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent and Tower Hamlets.

The work of the network starts now.  We are already sharing ideas of best practice from successful Birmingham programmes such as the fair money manifesto, places of welcome initiative  and the Birmingham Jobs fund; and we are learning about other projects from across the country.

Over the next few months we will continue to work together in a variety of ways across the network with the shared determination to address deep-rooted issues of inequality and disadvantage and deliver the changes needed.

If you would like to  follow the work of the network you can do so through the blog , via social media @fairbrum and #fairplaces or by getting in touch with our team [email protected]

It’s a commonplace to see the word ‘Roma’ juxtaposed to ‘homeless’, ‘beggar’, ‘benefits’, ‘rubbish’ and ‘migrant’ – when not tied up with trafficking and stealing children.  Unless it’s an absence as in the current UK government’s National Roma Inclusion Strategy, which pointedly hardly refers to Roma at all.  So we are forced to accept Roma ‘deficiency’ and their need for assistance or support (or solidarity even…)

What a joy then to attend an event in Manchester last month[1] where a panel considered the opposite question – how do Roma pose an opportunity for UK cities?   We heard tough head teachers say that the presence of Roma children in school had “brought us an understanding of the work ethic, and how children can be resourceful and adapt, and – a little but important thing – how young children understood how to eat together and with adults….  In fact, Roma children have done us all a service by teaching us to be better at our jobs”.  A point a leading social entrepreneur made: “Personal social services in this country are organised for Mr & Mrs Average – but rarely for anyone slightly different, let alone chaotic.  Roma are different, and if we can co-develop services with Roma then everyone would benefit”.   A young Roma woman said that it was only coming to this country that (a) she knew what discrimination was, as she’d accepted the inevitability of exclusion in her country of birth, and that (b) she became aware of her own capabilities and contribution.  A university teacher spoke about the importance of family relationships, self-reliance, innovation and adaptability (especially to earn a living) – all those virtues that are supposedly upheld by leading politicians and newspaper editors.   A leading politician talked about how young Roma people can enable neighbourhoods to become stronger and more confident as barriers and misunderstandings get broken down initially between young people.  And finally, a writer reminded us that Britain has a long, but variable history of welcoming people trying to both make a better life and escaping oppressive treatment; “do we want to move back from being one of the most tolerant and multi-ethnic countries in the world – and if so, at what cost to many of us?”

There are some critics of migration and EU migrant communities, who focus on the incidents of people who appear willing to work for very low pay in appalling conditions, and families who appear to tolerate substandard and overcrowded housing.    But isn’t this a classic illustration of ‘blame the victim’?  Where are the regulations and enforcement actions taken by, for example, HMRC against rogue employers, or by housing authorities against unscrupulous landlords?  As the social entrepreneur said at the Manchester meeting, if we can develop good services with and for Roma, everyone benefits.

The Government don’t seem to have explored the opportunities that Roma bring.  Twenty years ago, there was a strong offer of friendship and potential welcome to the East/Central European states and peoples.  But is it only their doctors and IT specialists we want; and at a pinch, the hairdresser and plumber?  The Roma communities emerge from decades of forced assimilation or forced exclusion; the UK offers hope.  And the Roma bring with them behaviours and aptitudes that are sorely needed.  What a treat to attend a meeting where the words ‘Roma’ and ‘success’ and ‘opportunity’ were heard.  The Roma Support Group applauds this type of initiative, and welcomes a growing movement within the UK of determined Roma and non-Roma activists who want to concentrate on the potential, rather than allow the mindless stereotypes to prevail in what passes for our national narrative.

www.romasupportgroup.org.uk

On 19 February in a small cafe run by former homeless people and ex prisoners in the East End of London, Criminal Justice Innovations recently launched a book and a support programme. The book is called StreetCraft – and it tells the true stories of dozens of amazing people who have gone against the grain and attempted to do something new within the criminal justice system. The support programme – StreetCraft Scholarships – will assist the next generation of people like those who contributed to the book, to make their innovative ideas for improving the lives of victims, making communities safer, and ‘resocialising’ offenders, a reality.

The book took many months to put together, not least because the innovation world is uncertain and the criminal justice world can move both very fast and painfully slow. Over the course of putting the book together we spoke to over thirty justice pioneers, twenty nine of whom were eventually featured in the book. Two of these worked on the Transition to Adulthood (T2A) pilot projects, demonstrating the importance of focusing on a young person’s maturity level rather than deciding whether to treat them as an adult or child based on some arbitrary age cut-off point. Their experiences, like of many others we spoke to, show how important it is to forge the right alliances early on and have early stage support  when you are trying to improve aspects of criminal justice practice which your professional judgement tells you aren’t working all that well.

This is one of the reasons the Centre for Justice Innovation has launched the StreetCraft Scholarships, in partnership with the Young Foundation and Clinks. We believe that the brilliant people who opened up to us and the world, by participating in the book, are right. There is a wealth of innovative ideas and capacity for innovation in the criminal justice world. And there are many creative passionate people working in the sector, who want to make things better. But the gap lies at the very early stage, when an idea is first formed and it needs to be developed to prove that it can fly. Big criminal justice delivery agencies aren’t always so great at nurturing the innovations brought to the table by ‘StreetCrafters’, and even those which are don’t always have the right alliances to ensure the right reach, support and embedding in the community.

We are not claiming that the StreetCraft Scholarship will change all of that overnight. But we do hope to keep proving, as we did in the book, and as smart funders like the Barrow Cadbury Trust prove through high impact collaborative initiatives as the T2A Alliance, those who want to innovate in the sector, driven by their sense of social mission, are not alone. If you would like to read some truly engaging and sometimes moving stories of people trying to make the world a better place, you can download the book for free here. And if you know such a person and feel they may need a bit of support in taking their practice-led idea to the next level, please send them our way.

In 2012 the Northern Ireland NEETS (young people not in education, employment, or training) Strategy was awarded an additional £41 million up to 2015.  Although throwing money at a problem may not always yield the best results, (as it’s the systems and processes behind the investment which are the crucial drivers), it is a step in the right direction for those young people.  What this investment demonstrates is an understanding of the issue and a commitment to “turning the curve”.

However, for young people with severe learning disabilities, life isn’t quite so rosy.  In April 2008 MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly) were told that of the 100 young people leaving special schools each year in Northern Ireland, 20% of those with additional complex/profound disabilities would have no choice but to go to a day centre, as there were too few opportunities and support systems to enable them to go on to further education.  Put bluntly the needs of these young people are once more being ignored, despite them coming under the NEETS category.   It was this anomaly that led to the establishment of the Post 19 Campaign in April 2010.

The Post 19 Campaign now numbers 150 parents/carers of young people with severe learning disabilities as well as 21 SLD (Severe Learning Difficulties) Special Schools from across Northern Ireland.  The Campaign questions the lack of post-educational placements for these young people when they leave school at 19.

Equality and disability access issues apply to every creed, class and gender in Northern Ireland.  This is not a green and orange issue.

The Campaign  realises that the Stormont Assembly is accessible in a way in which Government is not in the rest of the UK.  But whilst the campaign can access politicians, and has backed up discussions with its research report ‘The Impact of Transition on Family Life 2012’ the outcome is still sympathy and support not constructive action for change.  So how can we turn this around?

I was fortunate to win the SMK Campaigners Award for Social & Economic Justice in 2013 (sponsored by Barrow Cadbury Trust and Shelter).  As an award winner I received a package of training and mentoring to enable me to drive the campaign forward.  With the assistance of my mentor Dr Michael Wardlow, Equality Commissioner for NI, we moved the focus away from the problems and towards solutions.

In our discussions with Ministers and government departments the Campaign is recommending alternative post educational placements which we identified in our research report.  One of these suggestions was to bring education, not necessarily formal or accredited, into the day centre, where peripatetic learning support teams could be employed to oversee the transfer of Individual Learning Plans from the special school sector.  This would ensure that young people with severe learning and additional complex and/or profound disabilities are no longer written off at 19 years as incapable of learning.  Radical? Not really. Practical? Absolutely!

To our delight the Department of Employment and Learning has included this proposal in its current inquiry due to finish in March 2014.  So progress is underway, but how far this goes is anybody’s guess.  But if all else fails there’s always Plan B – legislation.

Julie Jamieson is the 2013 SMK Social & Economic Justice Award winner

It is estimated brain injury and the resulting long term disability may affect at least 1 million people in the UK. Yet, Brain injury often goes unrecognised, undiagnosed and unsupported due to a lack of awareness and recognition within society.  Even when ‘mild’ in nature, brain injury can damage the parts of the brain that control memory, communication, anxiety and aggression. If left unsupported, seemingly small impairments, coupled with mental health issues and addiction issues, can lead to a series of poor judgements and can result in problems sustaining a job, home or relationships.

Brain Injury in Prison Populations

Given its possible link to social exclusion, the Disabilities Trust Foundation undertook the largest study in the UK on the prevalence of brain injury within an adult male prison. Carried out at HMP Leeds, initial research findings published in November 2012 showed that almost half of adult male offenders (47%) had a history of brain injury^[i]. Of those, 63% reported that their first Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)  happened before their first offence, and 30% had experienced more than five TBIs.  Because of this finding, the Disabilities Trust  Foundation has set up a service within HMP Leeds providing screening, training and support programmes to look at the over-representation of brain injury within this group.

Supporting Offenders with Brain Injury

An NHS approved assessment tool, developed by The Disabilities Trust Foundation called  the Brain Injury Screening Index ©, is used to screen all offenders entering HMP Leeds, to identify those who may have an acquired brain injury. Positively identified offenders then work with the Foundation’s ‘Linkworker’, to deliver person-centred rehabilitation and develop partnerships with health, probation, homeless, and drug and alcohol services to ensure each individual has an appropriate support network in place.

Carolyn Lund, Acting Governor, HMP Leeds said:  ‘We’re used to people being complex and having a whole range of needs that are challenging to address but the dedicated Linkworker means that all staff have someone to turn to for advice.’

National Recognition

Brain injury among offenders is beginning to be addressed on a national level. The HMP Linkworker service has led to inspectors routinely asking prisons what services they have in place for offenders with brain injuries. The Foundation has also taken a leading role in advising NOMS, Department of Health and NHS England on intervention, liaison and diversion strategies for offenders with brain injury.

Next steps

Supported by The Barrow Cadbury Trust, the Foundation is now evaluating the Specialist Brain Injury Linkworker service within the youth justice system. Replicating the HMP Leeds model, a study at HMYOI Wetherby will evaluate whether routine screening, increased awareness, staff training and tailored support reduces recidivism among brain injured offenders.

Working with Professor Huw Williams, a renowned expert in the area of brain injury and author of  the Barrow Cadbury Trust-funded  T2A (Transition to Adulthood Alliance)  report, Repairing Shattered Lives: Brain injury and its implications for the criminal justice system, the 12-month study will conclude with the publication and dissemination of an impact evaluation report.

Professor Huw Williams will be  investigating  the scale of the problem, looking at preventative action and improving detection and management of brain injury in the youth justice system in a follow up to this blog in March.

This blog is an abridged version of an article which was published in Criminal Law and Justice Weekly

“We need a beacon that humanises human rights, inspiring everyone to realise they benefit all of us here in the UK, every day, in very practical ways; that they are an important part of our shared heritage, helping to make equality, dignity and respect real for everyone.”

This is how Paul Farmer, Chief Executive of Mind, launched Equally Ours last month as he explained why human rights are so important to all of us, including the people with mental health problems who Mind works with.

More than 100 campaigners and communicators, from large charities to small pressure groups, came together on 19 November to discuss how to develop a more positive conversation about human rights in the UK, and to hear how Equally Ours will support that.

Equally Ours has come into being on the back of two years of research and planning by a wide network of charities, all keen to see the public debate on human rights focus on how to make rights real, in practice, for the people they work with. Recognizing that the everyday story of human rights is missing from this debate at the moment, the Equally Ours partners are working together to raise awareness of the benefits of human rights for everyone.

Our research shows that most people are already supportive of human rights but that there is limited awareness of how human rights work in practice; this leads to many people feeling conflicted about them. We know that when people hear about the way that human rights are relevant to them in their everyday lives, they understand them better and are more supportive overall. As organisations who believe firmly in the importance of strengthening the human rights safety net for everyone, it is important that we keep raising awareness of its benefits.

There is a real challenge involved in this: our analysis of the current media discourse about human rights shows that it is predominantly negative, with stories showing the benefits of human rights in everyday life almost entirely missing.

But this untold story is also our opportunity. By giving a voice to individual stories of people’s human rights being affected, we believe we can open up a more positive public debate about human rights more broadly.

When we get older, human rights protect our dignity in hospitals. If we have mental health problems our human rights help ensure we receive high quality, compassionate and safe care. We can use our human rights to challenge racism and disability discrimination. As children, our human rights support us if we experience violence and sexual abuse. This is the human rights story that we want more people to hear.

As Paul Farmer says,

“As organisations working with people whose human rights are too often at risk, we want to help people understand how the human rights safety net can protect them. This can help more people understand and feel confident about challenging abuses when they happen. It can also help prevent abuses happening in the first place.

We need to facilitate that kind of conversation on a national scale and reframe the narrative. The way to achieve this is through a values-based approach to communicating about human rights. Mind supports Equally Ours because this is exactly what the campaign aims to do.”

Working as a partnership, Equally Ours has exciting plans for 2014. We will produce communications briefings for campaigners and advocates, deliver training sessions, source and share stories that show the human rights safety net in action and work with organisations to develop values-based ways of talking about human rights. All of our resources are free to charities and NGOs interested in a new way of talking about the issues that matter to them and the people they work with.

If you would like more information about Equally Ours, sign up to our free briefings or get involved, get in touch.

E: [email protected]

W: www.equally-ours.org.uk

T: @equallyOurs

This week saw the launch of two reports supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust under its Resources and Resilience programme. On Wednesday 21 November, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) released the first part of its Breakthrough Britain II research on debt – Maxed Out – Serious Personal Debt in Britain.   Then on Thursday the Fairbanking Foundation (FF) released A Better Kind of Banking.

On first reading, these reports cover quite different ground. However, the links are there. Maxed Out looks at the causes and consequences of problem debt, exploring the personal, socio-economic and structural factors that cause it. It isn’t surprising to hear that those on low incomes, the unemployed, single parents, older people and those with mental health conditions are among the most likely to fall into debt. However, the report raises the important issue of the growing scale of personal debt, and the impact of the rising cost of living on this. Individuals who previously managed to get by and endure an occasional financial shock, can no longer do so.

The CSJ estimates that 8.2 million households in the UK now have no savings at all (around 50 per cent of these are from low income households). More and more people are turning to high-cost lenders to cover income shortfalls and half of payday loan users (600,000) took out the loan because they had no other access to credit.  At a time of year when households’ fuel usage will be going up and many will have to borrow to afford Christmas, this is worrying news.

There are solutions to serious personal debt we are told, such as access to affordable credit, free debt advice and better promotion of alternative financial providers such as Credit Unions. CSJ also raises the issue of complex financial products and the need to make these simpler or more appropriate for users. Excessive charges for overdrafts and penalty fees deter many people from engaging with the mainstream banking system altogether.

A Better Kind of Banking offers examples of banking products that encourage saving and/or help customers manage their money better. For example, thinkmoney (not a bank) sets up two accounts for its customers, one receives the customer’s income and is used to pay their regular bills, with remaining funds automatically transferred into the second card account. The client can use this for their spending, but if they want to move some of their designated “bills money” to their card account, they contact thinkmoney and discuss the transaction with a Money Manager.  The Money Manager will try and re-jig their budget to make the transfer possible without missing a bill payment, but where this isn’t possible, give common-sense budgeting advice to clients. Customers also get regular texts on the state of their accounts so they can budget accordingly.

Another example, Secure Trust Bank offers a current account into which customers can pay their income and make direct debits and standing orders. Customers can upload money from their account onto a prepaid card, so they can only spend what they have on their card. As there is no credit facility, there is no need for credit checks. If the items being paid out of its customers’ accounts bounce then the Secure Trust Bank does not charge a fee.

Both of these accounts come at a monthly cost to the customer, which will limit who can engage with them. However, they are great examples of how banking products can help people to try and manage their income. Neither can combat the rise in living costs or prevent a financial shock, but they can help to limit the chance of a person falling into debt into the first place. The CSJ report cites ‘escalating penalty charges’ and ‘juggling of finances’ as some of the contributing factors to a spiral of debt. Any banking products that help customers avoid and manage these better must be a good thing. And, the report tells us, thinkmoney and the Secure Trust Bank have business models that work.

It seems likely that personal debt will continue to grow as Universal Credit is rolled out, the cost of living continues to go up and a rise in interest rates looms. It is even more critical then that more banks offer products that help customers save when they can and manage whatever they have better. The FF report is optimistic that a culture shift amongst the larger banks is coming, but believes that more public and competition scrutiny, improved infrastructure and better regulation is needed. These won’t come easily, but as the authors of the report point out, the ingredients are there.  A different kind of mainstream bank, “based on a culture and business model in which banks are paid for helping customers to manage their money more successfully, including saving and staying out of debt” is not an impossibility and if ever it was needed, it’s now.

On Tuesday, the new living wage was announced at £7.65 outside of London and £8.80 within the capital. This comes after the minimum wage was increased to £6.31 last month.

The living wage is calculated annually with separate rates for those living outside London (by the Centre for Research on Social Policy at Loughborough University), and for those living in the capital city (by the Greater London Authority’s Living Wage Unit).  The living wage is predicated on one simple fact: vast numbers of people in work do not earn enough to live on. The introduction of the minimum wage in 1999 has acted as a buffer against some of the most extreme forms of low pay but, with living standards rising and minimum wage increases failing to keep up with the rate of inflation, the minimum wage is not a buffer or a solution to low, insecure pay.

The Resolution Foundation’s report, Low Pay Britain 2013, found that the number of people being paid less than the living wage has rocketed in recent years, increasing from 3.4m in 2009 to 4.8m in April 2012, making up 20% of the workforce.

Low pay is a significant contributor to in-work poverty, and the institute for Fiscal Studies’ analysis demonstrated that hourly pay is a better predictor of in-work poverty than hours of work. However, the characteristics of a person’s job does contribute to the risk of low pay.

Low Pay Britain 2013 illustrated that some groups are more vulnerable to being in low pay than others:

• Women make up the majority of low paid workers whilst a recent report by the TUC illustrated that low pay amongst young women has trebled over the last 20 years.
• Low pay is higher amongst those in low- and middle-skilled occupations such as sales or customer services, as well as those on part time or temporary contacts.
• Older and younger workers are more likely to be paid below the living wage threshold.
• 16-20 year olds make up 83% of those in extreme low pay.

Current political discourse surrounding making work pay has continuously highlighted work as the best means of getting out of poverty. However, this is only possible if work pays enough for people to live on and if they are in secure roles with opportunities to progress. Without a living wage, in-work poverty persists and low wages will continually be subsidised by the taxpayer.  Since launching in 2001, the Living Wage Campaign has won over £210m of additional wages, lifting 40,000 families out of poverty, and over 430 employers have been accredited as living wage employers.

The living wage benefits both workers and employers, as highlighted by joint research from the Queen Mary University of London and Trust for London. Employees are not only better able to provide for themselves and families but also reported that being paid a living wage allowed them to spend more time with their families. Living wage employers benefitted from having more positive and loyal employees as well as better retention rates.

However, despite the traction the campaign has gained thus far, there is still a way to go. To support the millions of people currently in low-paid roles, more employers need to join the existing 450 employers already committed to paying the living wage, and across different sectors. This comes at only a small cost to the organisations. A commitment to the living wage, alongside secure employment, provides the best means of lifting people out of in work poverty whilst at the same time creating better workplaces.

Like many others I’ve been watching the debate about energy company profits and price rises. I find myself disillusioned with the whole thing; I feel helpless and outside of the discussion; I don’t feel I have a voice and neither do the people I work with. Individuals are of little relevance or consequence – it’s about the wants of corporate finance, majority shareholding institutions concerned more with money than the needs of people. Those on the margins don’t matter, dividends do!

Whilst politicians consider whether levels of profit are too high or if it should be made easier to switch supplier, what I and my colleagues know, and can evidence, is that many people are suffering real hardship. One of the services we run at Birmingham Settlement is a debt advice service and the numbers of people coming to us for advice has spiralled this year. Yesterday we had 53 people through our door seeking financial help and advice – the largest number we’ve ever had in a single day.

I would like politicians and energy company CEOs to spend time with some of the people who through circumstance beyond their control cannot afford the fuel needed to heat their homes or cook their food. We work in partnership with others such as food banks to provide support where it is most needed and I’m afraid a response we are increasingly hearing from clients is ‘there’s no point, I can’t afford the fuel to cook the food’.

I was involved in a discussion a few days ago about whether the UK was the 5^th, 6^th or 7^th largest economy in the world – it seemed to depend on which report you read; the discussion went on to whether it was right for people to be limited to three food parcels per family, irrelevant of circumstance. I was amazed that the idea of food banks now seems to be an acceptable concept, everyday language – is it really acceptable in 2013 that the second largest city in one of the biggest economies in the world has such a problem; that its own citizens cannot cook the contents of a food parcel because they have no fuel?

I am reminded of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – the most basic human life needs include food, drink, shelter, warmth – how on earth can we expect people to grow and prosper if they can’t cook a meal?

Winter is almost on us and for too many this means additional hardship as they will not be able to meet the costs of soaring fuel bills; they will no doubt face the consequences of not being able to contribute to the billions handed out in dividends to the privileged few.

At Birmingham Settlement we have suggested a practical measure that could really make a difference. We are asking the energy companies to give every household access to an hours’ supply a day irrespective of debt and personal circumstance. This means if prepayment meters have no credit fuel would still be available for one hour everyday – we suggest between 12 noon and 1 pm. Energy providers (electric and gas) have the technology to make this happen. The residential supply of water cannot be legally disconnected, where as fuel is increasingly disconnected; and to the poorest families in our society. This is wrong! Profit making energy companies need to show social responsibility – support society by putting more back, and now!

Birmingham Settlement has begun an e-petition to ask the Government to legislate for the basic human right for every household to be able to cook a hot meal each day under a Fuel for Food campaign – you can support us by signing the e-petition here.