Anti-poverty action plan two years in the making

from The Hamilton Spectator

By Bill Dunphy

After nearly two years of consultation, research, discussion and planning, the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction releases its community action plan this morning.

On hand will be 260 community and business leaders, educators, social service staff and anti-poverty activists, many of whom have been part of the consultations aimed at creating a plan to reach the roundtable's aspiration to "make Hamilton the best place to raise a child."

An advance copy of the 40-page report obtained by The Hamilton Spectator reveals the long-awaited community action plan is long on planning and short on action. It promises increased collaboration, discussion and planning, new partnerships and some advocacy work, but very little in the way of concrete actions.

One exception is a commitment to build "one or more neighbourhood hubs" to improve after-school programming.

Some of that shortcoming is unavoidable -- by its very nature the roundtable serves as a place for planning and collaboration, it doesn't control any of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in this city each year fighting poverty and its impact. The report's authors stressed it is just a starting point, and that it will take "everyone in Hamilton working together to really make an impact on poverty."

In addition to establishing an aspiration members hoped the entire city would adopt -- making Hamilton the best place to raise a child -- the roundtable had already created a framework for the strategy.

That strategy -- released last June -- identified five key areas: early learning and parenting; skills development (through education, activity and recreation); post-secondary skills development; employment and asset building/wealth creation.

Today's report aimed to "identify Hamilton's strength in each area, identify the significant gap that children in poverty face (in that area), and imagine how we'd begin to level the playing field."

In each of the five areas of investment the plan offers things the roundtable will do and outcomes it hopes to achieve.

The roundtable was convened in May 2005 by the city and the Hamilton Community Foundation.