Employment and financial stability are key factors in building families’ resilience. Financial stability enables families to access safe housing, healthy foods, and other necessities, to engage fully in their communities, and to plan for the future. However, too many families with children face persistent financial hardship impacting their health and well-being.
Work should free families from poverty, but the majority of children in poverty now live in working families. Five factors lock families in poverty, holding them back despite all their efforts to break free: low paid, insecure jobs; lack of suitable childcare; badly designed transport systems; weakened social security; and high housing costs. All these constraints can be removed.
The following resources will provide guidance in relation to “Financial Stability and Employment”:
- Poverty and its Effects on Children (external link) - Information about the Effects of Poverty on Children
- Greater Manchester Poverty Action (external link) - Statistics relating to poverty across ten themes, highlighting the scale of poverty and inequality of outcomes, both within the city region and between the city region and the rest of England
- Find a job (external link) - Information about full and part-time jobs in England, Scotland and Wales. You can use this service to search and apply for jobs
- National careers service (external link) - Careers information, advice and guidance. The team can help you to make decisions on learning, training and work at all stages in your career
- Greater Manchester Combined Authority (external link) - A range of job opportunities across Greater Manchester
- Claim Child Benefit (external link)- Information about child benefit, how it works, what you will get, eligibility and how to claim
- Universal Credit (external link) - Information about universal credit, eligibility, what you will get, how your earnings affect your payments, how you are paid and how to claim
- Understanding Universal Credit (external link) - Information about how universal credit can help you
- Paying for childcare (external link) - Information about help with childcare costs
- Benefits calculator (external link) - Independent, free and anonymous benefits calculator to check what you could be entitled to
- NHS Healthy Start (external link) - Information about the healthy start scheme. If you’re more than 10 weeks pregnant or have a child under 4, you may be entitled to get help to buy healthy food and milk
There are a number of organisations that can support families with substance financial stability and employment: