Tackling Poverty Action Plan

The Community Food Co-operative Programme has a priority focuson areas of social, economic and rural deprivation, includingCommunities First areas. There are now over 300 Food Co-opsoperating across the whole of Wales, serving approximately 4,500customers with nearly 7,000 bags of produce per week.We are continuing to provide free milk for under 7s. The school milkscheme supports our whole school approach to improving nutrition inschools and encouraging children to develop good eating and drinkinghabits. The school census 2011 indicates that 109,617 pupils receivedfree milk.Homecare and other non-residential social services are free to olderpeople and people with disabilities if they have income below a predefinedlevel. Even where their income is above this charges for theseservices are limited to £50 per week. The Social Services FairerCharging -The First Steps Improvement Package, introduced in April2011, has provided greater consistency to the charging by localauthorities for the provision of non-residential social services. ThePackage introduced, amongst other initiatives, a maximum weeklycharge of £50 across any local authority in Wales for key servicesprovided to a person, regardless of the hours of care or complexity ineach individual’s circumstance. This Package has helped service userslive as independently as possible in their own home and remain withintheir community, its financial safeguards ensured a significantproportion of users pay no charge at all. The Package thereforeprovides security for the most vulnerable members of society, oftenwith limited disposable income.The Package is being monitored during its inaugural year ofimplementation with local authorities reporting the impact of the newpolicies on their charging regimes and its benefit to service users. Thesecond and final set of Monitoring Reports from local authorities arebeing analysed to asses the overall impact the Package has had oncharging by local authorities for provision of non-residential socialservices and an assessment of the appropriateness of existingregulations.We are committed to keeping water bills at an affordable level and forcustomers to have a choice of charging options that will reduce debtand protect vulnerable groups.Community resilienceCommunities First will continue to help to ameliorate the effects ofpoverty by providing support and opportunities to help people addresschallenges and difficulties which affect individuals, families andparticular groups. At the same time the programme will strengthen thecommunities as a whole, by building the confidence and skills of local20