The Brighter Futures conference, 'Just About Managing' was on the 08th February 2018 at the Radisson Blu hotel. The event was kindly sponsored by the Ana Leaf Foundation, without whom we would not have been able to raise the important issues surrounding poverty and attainment for families with children.

Senator Ian Gorst opened the conference with a brief outline on how the states is working to do their part for families in Jersey, including ensuring all contractors for the States are paying their staff the living wage.

Key note speakers Esther Dermott (Bristol University, Head of School for Policy) and Deborah McMillan (Jersey Children's Commissioner) both raised crucial points about the ways in which parents are forced to cope in both the UK and Jersey and the effects that this has for children throughout their lives. As well as an academic analysis of the picture of poverty, both speakers provided very real stories of people in crisis on a day to day basis.

Critical questions were posed to the panel which included, Esther Dermott, Deborah McMillan, Patricia Tumelty (Co-Ordinator of Services for Families) and Ruth Brunton (CEO, Brighter Futures), such as "How do we re-frame the narrative on poverty to move away from placing the responsibility on individuals to understand and change the structure?" and "How will we truly start to close the disadvantage gap if children's health care is not free at the point of delivery?" amongst others.

The Brighter Futures Drama Team offered four stories taken from their recent plays which are written by clients using the stream of consciousness writing method.

Staff and management of Brighter Futures would like to thank all of the attendees to the conference for joining them for the morning and lending their voices to help raise these important issues. To download a copy of the slides from the conference please CLICK HERE.