Background
In September 1999, following the Prime Minister’s pledge to eradicate child poverty, the Government published the first "Opportunity for all" report, subtitled "Tackling poverty and social exclusion". This began a series of annual reports describing the Government’s strategy and progress in addressing poverty and social exclusion. The reports include contributions from almost all government departments. They also include a wide range of indicators of poverty and social exclusion and allow scrutiny of the progress against those indicators.
The first three reports – "Tackling poverty and social exclusion"; "One year on: making a difference"; and "Making progress", were structured around life-cycles and looked at policies to help children and young people, people of working age, and older people. They also looked at policies to help disadvantaged communities.
The fourth and fith reports took a more analytical approach than previous years, focusing more sharply on the policies that had most to offer in addressing the key drivers of poverty: ensuring that work that pays is possible; supporting those unable to work; investing in services for children to break cycles of deprivation; and tackling inequalities by improving public services. The fifth report looked more closely at some specific challenges that the Government faced, relating to three vulnerable groups: large families, disabled people and people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Another innovation in 2005 was a special section of the DWP website that contains indicators of progress, which are updated as and when new data becomes available. The website has been a success and has been regularly updated.
This sixth and seventh reports, (September 2004 and October 2005) returned to the life-cycle approach in the main chapter but kept to the well received idea of introducing themed chapters designed to look more closely at specific challenges. The 2004 report focussed on areas of deprivation. The 2005 Report contained two themed chapters. The first themed chapter set out the Government’s current programme to tackle poverty amonst women. The second themed chapter (as part of the UK's Presidency of the EU) studied the European dimension and identified the challenges we faced in this country were not confined solely to these shores.
This eighth (2006) report was made up of two documents – ‘Our Strategy’ and the Indicators document. The Strategy document presented an overview in the ‘life-cycle’ approach, setting out progress to date. It drew on relevant departmental five year strategies and other key documents, setting out how government would achieve both our short and longer term targets. A chapter on Child Poverty set out the cross-Government strategy which would deliver on our aim to halve and eradicate child poverty and to ensure all children have the best start in life. The Indicators document provided an important annual audit that monitors the progress of the Governments strategy to tackle poverty and social exclusion.
This year’s publication of the updated Indicators document sets out progress against all of the indicators used to monitor progress in Opportunity for all. The move away from having an accompanying strategy document reflects the fact that many challenges remain and that tackling these updated challenges requires a new focus. Other documents provide the information on the key developments in our poverty and social exclusion strategy.
