A new tool has been launched so that churches can look up the most deprived areas in their parishes to help them fight poverty.
The Church Urban Fund has created a searchable online database of statistics, for example life expectancy, the amount of social housing and the number of lone parents, to help churches know where to target their ministries.
Users can type in names or postcodes and the search engine will provide graphs and numbers outlining the levels of need in an area.
What will it actually tell you about?
- child poverty
- working-age poverty
- pensioner poverty
- life expectancy
- social housing
- lone parents
- ethnic diversity
Jeremy Aspinall from Church Urban Fund told Premier: "We're giving them access to statistics, but then they can see beyond those statistics to the needs of people, so what we see is that churches all over this country, and particularly in areas of deprivation, are starting projects.
"In the Blackburn Diocese [for example], your life expectancy for boys is 58 years, whereas if you happen to be in the London Diocese, your life expectancy is 93 years.
"It starts to tease out lots of issues at play there and we're helping people to understand that."
Listen to Premier's Hannah Tooley speak to Jeremy Aspinall here:
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Article by Hannah Tooley
Hannah Tooley is a multimedia journalist for Premier.
