Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust: Community-led approaches to reducing poverty in neighbourhoods

Overview

The impacts of poverty stretch beyond the individual or household and into neighbourhoods and communities.

JRF is in the process of developing an Anti-Poverty Strategy for the UK. As part of this we need to broaden our knowledge of what community-led approaches have been employed at a neighbourhood level with the aim of reducing poverty. We want to learn from both UK and international examples of community-led approaches and explore different models of collective action that have worked towards reducing poverty.

The budget for this project is upto £20,000 including VAT.

The project has a timescale of 4 months, starting September 2015.

Background

JRT know that the terms community and neighbourhood can mean different things to different people. We want this review to be about placebased action and change. When we refer to community, we are not only concerned with the actions of those who live in a place, but also those who work in a place; have a responsibility for it; or a position of power within it. We are interested in communityled approaches at a local level, hence the reference to neighbourhoods.

In relation to approaches we are as interested in approaches that are concerned with the role of individuals and relationships in reducing poverty as those approaches which focus on structural things such as welfare, jobs and housing.

Through this review we want to understand the effectiveness / ineffectiveness of communityled approaches to reducing poverty in neighbourhoods. The review will be used internally to help shape any further work we do in this area. It is also important that the outputs from the review are accessible to those who are at risk of or experiencing poverty as well as with those working to reduce it.

Aims

The aim of this project is to undertake a review of the evidence on communityled approaches to reducing poverty in neighbourhoods. You will be able to:

• Identify effective communityled approaches to poverty reduction in neighbourhoods.
• Identify key lessons around what works and identify gaps in knowledge.

Outputs

• A draft report.
• A short (approx. 15,000 words) accessible report and an executive summary. (We may publish these in due course via the JRF website).
• Presentation followed by informal debrief.

Funding criteria

The key criteria against which proposals will be judged will be:

• Demonstration of a robust, good quality design appropriate to the project’s aims and the credibility of proposed strategies for identifying, accessing, assessing and reporting on relevant research.
• Ability to identify research led by or involving people with direct experience.
• A bold, explorative approach to the subject.
• Understanding of the policy, practice and community led research in and anti poverty context.
• Knowledge of the relevant sources of evidence.
• Knowledge of, and access to, relevant networks and contacts to enable the work to be comprehensive, uptodate and wellgrounded.
• Capacity to deliver a high quality output.
• The proposed team’s experience and credentials in relation to the area of work.
• Adequate identification of the key risks and ways to mitigate these.
• Value for money.