Some signposts this week
A plan for workers, a plan for child poverty, a Pattern interview, and some stats on health
Hello everyone - a fairly quick, signposty type newsletter this week.
It's the final week of the school year, and battery levels are low.
To begin, the North East Combined Authority cabinet is meeting next week, and the papers have been published.
They include some fairly significant stuff, including adoption of the local transport plan, a ‘new deal for North East workers’, and the child poverty action plan.
In the case of both the workers and the child poverty plans, this is the Combined Authority out ahead of national policy, where central government plans on these issues are expected later in the year.
As a side note, if you're looking for who you ought to be speaking to at the Combined Authority about a particular issue, then the cabinet agendas are the place to go. You'll find officer names, job titles and email addresses in there.
I'll go properly into the plans over the summer, once they're adopted and I hopefully have the time to devote to some deep dives.
Pattern - Prof Greta Defeyter OBE
I spoke to Greta Defeyter for Pattern recently, expecting a standard conversation with an academic.
She is a specialist in childhood hunger, and helped devise the holiday activities and food (HAF) programme which supports kids in the school holidays, as well as the HAF+ programme which aims at teenagers and includes elements to support social mobility.
She's led a remarkable life, where she's overcome personal trauma and been motivated consistently by a desire for social justice.
She's run away to live on a commune in Key West, protested apartheid, met Nelson Mandela twice, and fled across the US border with a newborn.
It's a story well worth reading.
Premature Mortality
There's ONS data out on premature mortality across England and Wales.
Middlesbrough ranks worst in the North East, with 604 premature deaths per 100,000 population, while Newcastle ranks best on 513.
None of those are good, however. Data ranges from 285 in Richmond upon Thames, to 696 in Blackpool.
So, while there are places with worse figures, the region is towards the top end of the scale.
Healthy life expectancy
Flagging this one as well, on healthy life expectancy.
The data doesn't have regional or local splits, but it does look at the relationship between deprivation and healthy life expectancy.
You'll have already guessed the North East doesn't do well on deprivation.
It's a little out of date now, but I still refer to this interactive map from 2019.
It shows at a very local level the proportion of households which fall into each decile of the Index of Multiple Deprivation.
At a very broad brush level, you can see the darker areas will be those where deprivation is worst, and where healthy life expectancy will tend to be lower.
Working with me
That's it for this week. Back next time, when either some new stuff will have happened, or I'll write about one or more of those plans mentioned above.
In the meantime, if you need to get hold of me, I'm on arlen@arlenpettitt.co.uk.