Chapter 1: Introduction: Starting the Action on Poverty Conversation

This edited volume is a collection of chapters designed to provoke conversation and discussion about poverty and hardship. The editorial team are all involved in anti-poverty learning and teaching at Staffordshire University. We are a team of academics, all with practice experience of working in the anti-poverty field in the third sector and for some also in the public sector. Between us, we have worked in debt advice, welfare rights and benefits advice, housing advice, employment rights, asylum seeking and immigration law, volunteer bureau leadership, commissioning anti-poverty work, and leading through strategic partnership working. It is also noteworthy that there are academic staff in the Action on Poverty team with lived experience of low income and related health and social disadvantages. This chapter aims to acquaint the readers with the origins of the book, suggestions on how to read the book and provides an overview of the book chapters.