Donegal County Councils Experience of Developing a Poverty Profile

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Donegal County Councils Experience of
Developing a Poverty Profile

• 15th /16th May 2006
• By
• Ms Valerie Bryce
• Community Development Worker
• Community Culture and Enterprise

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Outline of Presentation

• Background
• What is a Local Anti Poverty Profile?
• The Process to Building up a Poverty Profile in
  County Donegal
• Steps involved in carrying out a Poverty Profile
• Poverty in County Donegal
• Difficulties and Challenges
• Uses and Applications

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1. Background

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What is Poverty?

• People are living in poverty, if their income
  and resources (material, cultural and social) are
  so inadequate as to preclude them from having a
  standard of living, which is regarded as
  acceptable by Irish Society generally. As a
  result of inadequate income and resources people
  may be excluded and marginalised from
  participating in activities, which are considered
  the norm for other people in society

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2. What is a Local Anti Poverty Profile?

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2. What is a Local Anti Poverty Profile?

• A Local Poverty Profile involves systematically
  identifying gathering and mapping information on
  social and economic need in your area, it should
  clearly identify the areas and communities that
  experience the highest levels of disadvantage and
  the nature of that disadvantage.

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3. The Process

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The Process

• Cross Directorate Internal Working Group
  established in Donegal County Council
• CPA Consultant assigned to work with DCC on the
  development of all stages of the Local Anti
  Poverty Strategy including the development of
  the Local Poverty Profile
• Research undertaken by Research and Policy Unit
  in Donegal County Council - but under taken by
  Social Inclusion Units in both West Meath and
  Cork County Councils

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The Process

• Learning from Experience of other local
  authorities that had compiled poverty profiles
• Indicators identified by
• CPA - National Poverty Indicators
• Internal Cross Directorate Working Group
• Research and Policy Unit
• Data Gathered and Analysed by Research and Policy
  
• Drafts presented to Internal Cross Directorate
  Working Group, who made the final sign off
• Copies of final draft sent to SIM and CDB for
  Information Purposes

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4. Steps in Developing a Local Poverty Profile

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3. Steps in developing a Local Poverty Profile

• Selection of Themes
• Selection of Indicators
• Data Identification Collection
• Basic Data Analysis
• Mapping (using GIS)
• Presentation Review

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I. Selection of Themes

• Themes
• Poverty and people
• Welfare Dependency and Employment
• Housing
• Health and Poverty
• Educational Disadvantage
• Quality of Life
• Physical Environment
• Infrastructure and Accessibility
• Local Specific Aspects

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II. Selection of Indicators

• Source
• Indicators identified under the 7 themes of NAPs
• Indicators and data relating to poverty and
  social exclusion collected from national and
  international publications like the CSO, DSCFA,
  International Labour Office etc.
• Indicators held by the different Local Authority
  Directorates on housing, roads, cultural services
  etc

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III. Identifying and Gathering Data

• Finding the most appropriate data is one of the
  key tasks in building up a
• Local Poverty Profile this was done
• Though Desk Research by the Research and Policy
  Unit under the direction of the Strategic Policy
  Manager to identify relevant local, national and
  international publications and datasets
• In the Internal Cross Directorate Working Group
  to identify appropriate indicators
• Through Consultations with each Directorate of
  Donegal County Council to identify data or
  datasets held within each directorate of the
  council

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IV Data Analysis

• Headline indicators were presented to
• Determine the extent of poverty within County
  Donegal across a number of thematic areas
• Allow for relative poverty comparisons between
  the Headline Poverty Indicators in County Donegal
  and State
• Determine the extent of deprivation across the
  149 different Electoral Divisions (149) within
  County Donegal (I.e. by mapping the Trutz Haase
  Deprivation Index)
• Examine poverty over a time series ie 1991 1996
  and 1996 2002 in an effort to determine if the
  situation is deteriorating of improving

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5. Poverty in County Donegal
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I. A comparion of deprivation scores between the
State, Border, County and SubCounty Level
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A Comparsion of Relative Affluence/Deprivation
Scores 2002

Source GAMMA, 2002
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I. Deprivation Scores at sub county level
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Note Relative deprivation in County Donegal in
2002 was 9.6 while in the State it was 2.2
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II. A comparsion of headline indicators between
County Donegal and the State
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III. A comparsion of poverty levels across
counties in Ireland
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IV. Lower Social Classes in County Donegal
vis-à-vis the State 1986, 1991,1996, 2002
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The percentage of the population falling into
Social Class 5 (Semi Skilled) Social Class
6(Unskilled)

Source CSO, 2002
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6. Difficulties and Challenges
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6. Difficulties and Challenges

• Lack of a dedicated Social Inclusion Unit in
  County Donegal
• Unlike Cork and Westmeath Local Authorities
  Donegal was capturing data for the first time and
  not building on the work already done
• Difficulties in Dis-aggregation of Statistical
  Information to County Level
• In some cases the only available data is at
  national or regional level for example Health
  Board Data
• Timeliness of Data
• There was a reliance on the 1996 or 2002 data,
  which was only coming on stream when the profile
  was being developed

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6. Difficulties and Challenges

• Lack of information in some areas on specific
  circumstances of target groups
• Early school leavers
• Literacy Levels
• Inability to attain specific indicators
• the number of older people without access to a
  telephone
• The number of lone parents or older people who
  rely solely on state benefits for their income
• No Primary Research
• It was not within the scope of the poverty
  profiles to undertake additional primary research
  to gather information. Therefore, the poverty
  profiles are based soely on secondary sources and
  from existing statistical resources of agencies
  currently working within the field

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7. Uses and Applications
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Uses of a Profile

• Identify key priority or focus areas for the
  Development of the Local Anti Poverty Strategy
• Raising Awareness on Poverty Issues across Local
  Authority Directorates
• Local Authority Service Planning -By identifying
  target groups where an integrated service
  approach is required towards tackling poverty and
  social exclusion

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Uses of a Profile

• Economic Taskforces - by identifying gaps in
  socio economic infrastructure and highlighting
  the requirements for investments to fill those
  gaps
• External Dissemination to ensure that
  appropriate national, regional, local funding and
  resources can be targeted to areas of greatest
  need
• By Area Partnerships in service planning ie DLDC,
  IRDL, MFG

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Uses of a Profile

• By Letterkenny Institute other institutes to
  develop and devise educational initiatives to
  address gaps in service delivery
• Establishing a baseline against which the
  progress made in alleviating poverty in the
  county can be monitored on an ongoing basis
• Used by SIM to identify a target group action plan

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Outline of Presentation

• What is a Local Anti Poverty Profile?
• Steps involved
• The Process to Building up a Poverty Profile
• Poverty in County Donegal
• Difficulties and Challenges
• Uses and Applications