We have been working with Swansea Council and a team of Swansea-based community researchers to bring together local policy makers, practitioners and lived experience experts to co-create evidence-informed actions to support public services in addressing poverty stigma in Swansea.
Poverty stigma amplifies the effects of financial hardship and makes it harder for people to escape poverty. Tackling poverty-related stigma, our 2024 policy briefing demonstrates that poverty stigma is associated with poor mental health, social isolation, and reduced take-up of benefits and other support services, while Lifting the Lid on Poverty Stigma, based on a 2024 YouGov survey we commissioned revealed the scale of the issue in Wales, with 1 in 3 low income adults experiencing poverty stigma ‘always’, ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ in the last year.
Despite this, there is a lack of evidence about ‘what works’ to prevent and address poverty stigma and how that evidence can be applied through policy and practice in a particular locale. As such we have been working with partners in Swansea to co-design policy and practice actions to prevent and address poverty stigma.
The goals of this project were to help public sector partners in Swansea to:
- Understand and learn from lived experiences of poverty stigma in Swansea – where it comes from, how it shows up in people’s daily lives and their experiences of public services, and how it affects people.
- Understand the role of local public services – both in contributing to and reducing poverty stigma, whilst also building on any existing efforts that are already working well to tackle poverty stigma in Swansea.
- Learn from research and promising practice elsewhere – to explore what international evidence says about tackling poverty stigma and how these lessons can be applied to policy and practice in Swansea.
- Co-create a local vision and action plan for tackling poverty stigma – to guide Swansea Council’s Tackling Poverty Strategy and broader efforts to combat poverty stigma in Swansea.
We have published two key outputs from the research:
- A community-led report – Understanding and addressing poverty stigma in Swansea - developed by Swansea-based community researchers which brings together findings from qualitative research in Swansea to better understand how poverty stigma affects people’s lives and what actions can be taken to address it.
- A policy and practice report – Voices of Swansea: Challenging poverty stigma together - which summarises key insights into understanding, preventing and addressing poverty stigma at a local level in Swansea and beyond.
A key part of the process involved bringing together policy, practitioner and community insights with international academic evidence, via our Evidence Review and Policy Brief What Works to Prevent and Tackle Poverty Stigma. This resulted in the co-creation of eight key actions across three themes that can be taken to address stigma:
Removing stigma from access to support
- Improve data sharing across departments to streamline access and support processes
- Eliminate repetitive assessments by integrating services and sharing information
Delivering services with dignity and respect
- Establish access to universally three poverty stigma training for professionals, particularly targeted at addressing stigma
- Ensure that services are convenient for people who need to access them, for example by ensuring the provision of a physical spaces or in-person services to avoid digital exclusion
- Explore ways of better supporting groups most likely to experience poverty stigma, such as asylum seekers and refugees, who often face worklessness
Changing language, culture and systems
- Increase the involvement of people with lived experience when designing, delivering and evaluating services
- Ensure accessible and stigma-free language in communications such as official forms and letters
These actions will inform Swansea Council’s Tackling Poverty Strategy and the implementation plan associated with the strategy. All of the actions identified are relevant to varying extents to other local authorities in Wales and the rest of the UK interested in preventing and addressing poverty stigma.
