Child poverty - Slipping through the net

UK Government policy in recent years has overlooked the needs of children. Benefit cuts, Universal Credit and rigid economic employment policies have placed many parents in dire financial straits, and in the process damaged the welfare, learning outcomes and life chances of millions of children.

Defining poverty is problematic and hotly contested by governments and organisations such as the United Nations and Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG). Our Government uses relative poverty as the sole measure, defined as those families with a household income of 60 per cent of the national average, after housing costs. This measure is commonplace across Europe and is relative to the economic circumstances of individual countries and states.

New Labour aimed to halve child poverty by 2010 and to eradicate it by 2020. While the number in poverty did reduce during Labour’s time in office, the party failed to meet its own targets. Under the Conservatives, child poverty has increased exponentially. Often the terms ‘children living in poverty’ and ‘disadvantaged children’ are used interchangeably.

The Conservatives have instituted a fundamental revision and retrenchment of public spending. Austerity measures and the introduction of Universal Credit, designed to streamline the benefits system and make efficiency savings, have placed many children and their families in desperate financial situations.

Delayed benefit payments and the use of punitive financial sanctions imposed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have resulted in even greater hardship for many poor families.

SENSE OF DESPAIR

In 2018, the UN published a statement on its visit to the UK, by Professor Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

He was highly critical of the UK Government’s economic and welfare policies and pointed to ‘the immense growth in food banks and the queues waiting outside them, the people sleeping rough in the streets, the growth of homelessness, the sense of deep despair that leads even the Government to appoint a Minister for Suicide Prevention and Civil Society, to report in-depth on unheard of levels of loneliness and isolation.’

In response, the Government rejected the report’s findings, arguing that under their leadership, absolute poverty had reduced. But it is difficult to reconcile the Government’s response given the weight of evidence presented by the UN and other well-respected key organisations.

Professor Alston stated that the Government ‘has remained determinedly in a state of denial’. The report noted that the UK is one of the largest economies in the world and yet 14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are at more than 50 per cent below the poverty line, and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials.

BASIC HUMAN NEEDS

These figures have increased during the coronavirus crisis and are expected to increase further as the Government tries to claw back the financial support provided during the outbreak.

Without Government intervention, the Covid-19 outbreak could increase the number of British children living in poverty by almost 5 per cent to 4.5 million, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

These statistics do not support the Government’s position that families are better off under their ‘making work pay’ policy initiatives.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943) identified water, food, warmth, sleep, health and exercise as vital in order to achieve physical and economic safety and security. Therefore it is deeply concerning that in the UK so many children and families do not have access to these basic human needs.

Between April 2017 and March 2018, The Trussell Trust’s food bank network ‘distributed 1,332,952 three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis, a 13 per cent increase on the previous year’ (trusselltrust.org 2018). Almost half a million of these went to children.

The number of families being referred to food banks is at an all-time high and continues to rise. For children, the impact on their chances of a decent education and life success is profound.

When children grow up poor, they miss out on the things most children take for granted: warm clothes, school trips, having friends over for tea. Poor children achieve less at school and this affects their future economic success, as well as their health and mental well-being.

A FAIRER SOCIETY

Families experience poverty for many reasons, including rising costs and/or a drop in earnings through job loss or benefit changes; and Covid-19. But poverty isn’t inevitable.

The UN and CPAG contend that what is needed is the political will to ensure a fairer, healthier and successful society. Currently in the UK, work does not provide a guaranteed route out of poverty.

Economic short-termism, zero-hours contracts and part-time low-pay work all add to financial hardship. At least two-thirds of children growing up in poverty live in a family where at least one person works. Children living in poverty face a bleak future without concerted and determined social welfare reform that is empathetic to their needs.

ATTAINMENT GAPS

Children from poorer backgrounds lag at all stages of education. By the age of three, poorer children are estimated to be, on average, nine months behind children from more wealthy backgrounds, according to CPAG.

Nationally, nearly half of the children from disadvantaged backgrounds have not secured the essential knowledge, skills and understanding expected for their age by the time they finish Reception year.

In the UK, the gap at the end of the Foundation Stage remains stubbornly wide at 32.4 per cent. By this point, the odds of these children catching up are stacked against them.

According to Ofsted, in 2015, only 44 per cent of children who had not reached the expected level of development at the age of five went on to secure expected levels of achievement in reading, writing and mathematics at the age of 11. Nothing much has changed since then.

By the time young people take their end-of-school exams, those in receipt of free school meals do less well than their better-off peers with a gap of 28 per cent. In many schools, disruptive behaviour and mental health concerns can be directly linked to material and aspirational poverty.

THE REAL PROBLEM

Ingrained influences and relationships with key individuals undoubtedly affects the way children and young people see their place in the world. This, coupled with the pathologising effect of public policy, places children from poor families in the realm of low education standards, criminal activity, obesity and unambitious aspirations.

Such an approach focuses the problem on the children rather than with those responsible for policy and public services provision. The labels that society attaches to poor children have a profound impact on how children see themselves and how others see them.

What is needed is the political will to combat poverty which blights childhoods and leads to an uncertain future for the individual, for families, communities and the nation.

If children from poorer backgrounds are to overcome the barriers associated with their habitus and social, cultural and economic status, they need to access consistently good-quality or better education.

For that to have at least a reasonable chance, Government must invest in our education system – not in a piecemeal way, but generously; starting with pre-birth and early years provision.

FROM EXPERIENCE

In 2014, the Children’s Commission on Poverty reported on its study led by children and young commissioners. They gathered the views of experts, members of low-income families, and children who identified their families as ‘not well off’, to report on what it is like for a child living in poverty.

Fatimah, 12 years of age and one of the young commissioners, stated, ‘I was surprised to find out just how many children and young people are affected by poverty and that it makes them feel like an outsider in the society we live in today, because they cannot have the clothes and essentials they need, to not only make them fit in… but for them to live their lives happily with aspirations and contentment’.

Powerful testimonies from children provide explicit accounts of how poverty affects them directly. As one child said, ‘One of the big things is that child poverty actually affects your education, not just how you seem at school but actually how you learn at school, whether that’s through buying textbooks or ingredients for Food Tech, and stuff like that. All of it really has an impact.’

A PLACE IN SOCIETY

Financial wealth is no guarantee of intelligence or academic success. However, it does open doors of opportunity to well-off children through social networks and cultural and institutional capital. In contrast, children from poor families lack these ‘entitlements’ and so the doors of opportunity remain largely tightly closed.

We cannot underestimate the power and influence of families and professionals in the child’s early years. If we get the early years right, we pave the way for a lifetime of achievement. If we get them wrong, we miss a unique opportunity to shape a child’s future.

If high aspirations and ambitions were the norm and every child was raised with positive self-esteem, just maybe children from poorer families could also take their place in wider society and take advantage of the opportunities to improve their life outcomes.

Deborah Udakis is an early years consultant and former Ofsted inspector

MORE INFORMATION

• Alston P (2018) Statement on Visit to the United Kingdom by United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Poverty/EOM_GB_16Nov2018.pdf
• Child Poverty Action Group (2018) ‘The Impact of Poverty’ and poverty facts and figures, www.cpag.org.uk
• Holloway Eet al (2014) ‘At what cost? Exposing the impact of poverty on school life.’ The Children’s Commission on Poverty. www.childrenssociety.org.uk
• Reay D (1995) ‘“They Employ Cleaners to Do That”: Habitus in the Primary Classroom’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 16 (3), pp353-71
• Ridge T (2002) Childhood Poverty and Social Exclusion. The Policy Press
• Ofsted (2016) Unknown children – destined for disadvantage?
• The Trussell Trust (2018) ‘End of year statistics’, www.trusselltrust.org
• Wilkinson R (2005) The Impact of Inequality: How to make sick societies healthier. Routledge