Ensure a healthy standard of living for all

This priority focuses on:

Supporting Coventry residents to be financially resilient.
Identifying and targeting interventions to those who are disproportionately affected by low income and who are most at risk of financial crisis, and target interventions at an early stage.
Enabling all Coventry residents to have equal opportunities to access digital technologies, services and supports in a way that helps them in their daily lives.
Increasing earlier identification of issues and opportunities for prevention or early help, and to enable the delivery of integrated support and services, through a locality approach.

Background

The Marmot Review highlighted that having insufficient money to lead a healthy life creates significant health inequalities, leads to poorer health outcomes, and impacts life expectancy for some people.

The Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) showed that poverty and low living standards are powerful determinants of ill health and health inequity (Fair Society, Healthy Lives 2010). Poverty may be defined in different ways and there is no single, universally accepted definition.

Poverty is an issue which cannot be addressed by any one organisation or sector. We are planning to work with partners across the city to develop a strategic approach to both break the cycle of poverty and mitigate against the harm caused by poverty.

In today’s society, digital exclusion can be seen as a form of inequality. There is a close correlation between digital exclusion and social disadvantages including lower income, lower levels of education, and poor housing. Coventry City Council are planning to work with partners to embed digital and health literacy within their services so that all Coventry residents have equal access to digital technology and services; improve digital access, reducing the barriers to digital inclusion.

What we know

There are a number of programmes of work and activities that support the ensure a healthy standard of living for all recommendation which aim to:

Support Coventry residents to be financially resilient.
Identify and target interventions using the low-income family tracker tool to maximise benefit entitlement and income.
Understand our community’s local needs to support our residents to utilise digital systems to access digital support interventions and opportunities to maximise their income across the social gradient.
Improve the tools and approaches to engage people in support interventions to reduce long-term unemployment early across the social gradient including people living in poverty due to health and disability-related barriers to labour market access to support people to stay in work.
Work in partnership to support our residents that are disproportionately affected by fuel and food poverty with targeted interventions through the cost of living campaign.
Improve the energy efficiency of housing stock.
Improve the food environment with a connected system that allows access to food.

Legislation, Government guidance that support the ensure a healthy standard of living for all recommendation:

Links to service developments and strategies that support this recommendation:

Indicators

Proportion of households with low income
Children in low-income households
Digital Inclusion

Programmes and activities

Low Income Family Tracker
Advice Services
Job Shop Hub and Spoke model
Coventry Connects
Household Support Fund
West Midlands Fire Service Safe & Well Visits
Warm spaces
Food banks
Coventry Food Network
Community Cafes
Fuel Poverty interventions
Family Hubs
Supporting Families Programme- Intensive Family Support
Poverty Alliance
Coventry Library Service
Infant Feeding
Perinatal Mental Health
My Coventry
STEP Forward
Resettlement Programme

How we will measure progress

No.s of embedded Digital Champions within GPs, PCNs and community organisations who are championing digital health
No of data and device distribution banks (could ask for a postcode/ locality area G.P, VCSE and council)
LIFT (Low Income Family Tracker) tool data and real-life case studies
Coventry Food Networks data
Data from the energy crisis hotspots map (places where income is below average, but energy bills are higher than average due to poor housing)
West Midlands Fire Service information

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