London’s Children: Our Future Capital

This document, London's Children: Our Future Capital, contains details of a new joint target for tackling child poverty in London and identifies the priorities and actions that will accelerate progress towards this goal.

A shocking 1 in 4 children in London live in poverty. Tackling child poverty in London is essential if all our children, families, communities and our economy are to thrive.

London has a particularly high and persistent rate of child poverty, largely due to the lower levels of parental employment in the capital: 22.7% of children in the capital live in a household where nobody works. Therefore, London's leaders have agreed to work together to achieve a joint target of increasing parental employment by more than 3 percentage points by 2013.

London's Children: Our Future Capital was written by the Ministerial Working Group on child poverty in London: a coalition of national, regional and local government; key delivery agencies and third sector partners. It announces the joint target and sets out new actions that will help to address child poverty in London, and three principles to inform the work of all organisations working to tackle child poverty across the capital.

The document is an interesting and informative read for any organisation that works with children and families, including local authorities, health services, employment services, housing providers, children's centres and childcare providers. It explains what each of these partners can do to play their role in ending child poverty, and why it is essential that we all work together to achieve more for London's children.