Together with The National Lottery Community Fund, City Bridge Foundation, Pears Foundation and The Hunter Foundation, the programme is the first major funder collaboration in the UK focused on finding and funding scalable solutions to support the impact of poverty on children in the most economically deprived areas of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The launch of Communities for Children comes at a pertinent time given the latest Households Below Average Income statistics published by the Government show 4.5 million children were in poverty in the year to April 2024, an increase of 100,000 from the previous year.
Commenting on the launch of the programme, Fozia Irfan OBE, Director of Impact – Influence at BBC Children in Need, said:
“Child poverty is one of the most critical challenges in the UK today. It is a complex and deep-rooted social issue, and the impact it has on young lives varies with every individual and every place. We acknowledge that even the most promising strategies to address child poverty cannot reach far and fast enough without significant resources.
Together with our valued partners, we hope Communities for Children’s funding and multi-dimensional support will ultimately build a groundswell of community-led change, allowing sector leaders across the UK to pursue long-term solutions for children and young people living in poverty.”
For further information on the programme, click here.
