Ruth Stokes, NCAN Campaigns Lead, talks about the work of the Norfolk Anti-Poverty Alliance

2025 seems to have passed in a blur, and it’s always good to take stock at the end of a busy time.

We started the year by putting ourselves firmly on the radar with two public events; firstly in Norwich and then in King’s Lynn. At these events we heard from local groups about the challenges people are facing – children sleeping on the floor because they don’t have a bed, people paying bills on rotation, the impact on people’s mental and physical health of these stresses.

Many of us are well-versed on these issues – you see them every day, and your work is part of preventing or solving these crises. The challenges for the Anti-Poverty Alliance are to raise awareness and understanding for those who don’t see this day to day, and to work towards tangible solutions.

Highlights this year

Towards this, we jointly held a workshop with Norfolk County Council in March. This generated numerous ideas for potential projects, which we have been exploring through working groups.

A real highlight has been our Crisis Support Working Group. At the March meeting, partners shared insights with the County Council that fed into the design of the new rapid-turnaround Crisis Support Fund. In our October meeting we discussed the new service, and partners shared that while it isn’t perfect, for some it is a very quick and simple way to access emergency funds. We are planning another meeting in spring, to help shape plans for the new Crisis and Resilience Fund in April 2026.

With Hannah Worsley from Norwich Foodbank, we’ve also hosted a working group on face-to-face services, mapping ‘hub’ models that exist or are in development and creating new links between community services and outreach workers.

We have been building an understanding of flooring / furniture poverty in Norfolk and some of the solutions to it. There is already some incredible work being done on this locally by charities, social enterprises and housing providers, and I was pleased to be joined by End Furniture Poverty at a Homes for Cathy seminar last month, to discuss national and system-level solutions.

The Alliance still needs to work more closely with people with lived experience. I’m very grateful to the lived experience expertise group hosted by Norwich Foodbank and Your Own Place, who’ve ‘sense checked’ the Alliance objectives and find they align with their priorities and plans. And I am keen to visit more groups to get input, so please do invite me – campaigns@ncan.co.uk! I would also love to support more people to speak out – whether anonymously or in person – as more policymakers need to hear directly from those affected by their decisions.

Policy campaigns

We convened two policy campaigns this year. In spring we called for the government to drop its plans for huge cuts to PIP and the health element of UC, that would have created further hardship for disabled people. More recently, I worked with the Forum for Children and Young People to brief local MPs on the issue of child poverty in Norfolk, securing media coverage to highlight why the government is right to scrap the two-child limit on benefits. This feels like an area where the Alliance is playing a really valuable role – bringing the sector together to speak with collective voice.

2026 priorities include more collective campaigns and public engagement. I’m also hoping for more ‘sparks’ – unexpected outcomes that give new energy to the fight against poverty. After attending the Norwich launch of the Alliance, Lisa Vincent was so outraged by stories shared by local headteacher Jade Hunter that she was motivated to start a weekly community meal this summer and has now launched a social enterprise, EatSocial. Her goal is to run a profitable café, bringing money into community groups who can use it to provide hot meals for those in need. She’s currently looking for non-executive directors, so do apply if you are interested.

It shows there’s so much power in sharing the stories and insights that your organisations see every day, and I hope the Alliance can do more of this, with you, in the coming year.