|
Welsh Conservatives Opposition DebateChild Poverty03.02.10 Research published by Save the Children last week revealed that Wales is suffering the highest rate of children living in severe poverty in the UK, where 96,000 Welsh children exist without the basic necessities in life.Severe poverty is defined as living on less than £12,220 a year for a couple with one child, to cover basic essentials such as food, utility bills, clothing, transport, healthcare and activities for children.An extra 260,000 children in the UK were pushed into severe poverty during four years of economic boom even before the recession hit in 2008, taking the UK total to 1.7m.Save the Children concluded that efforts to reduce child poverty – with Government targets to eradicate it by 2020 – had not only stalled but ‘slid into reverse’.Some 13% of the UK’s children live in families earning 50% below the average UK income. But that rises to 15% in Wales.Scotland, has fewer children in severe poverty than Wales, despite almost double our population. The rise in the number of children living in severe poverty has occurred against a backdrop of rising levels of overall child poverty. Last June’s Joseph Rowntree Report ‘Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion in Wales 2009,’ found that even before the recession, half the previous improvement in child poverty had already been lost. The percentage of children living in child poverty is higher in Wales than any other UK nation. UK Government figures show a 3% increase in average poverty risk levels in Wales over the last three years. In Wales, 32% of children now live in poverty. This means that 192,000 children in Wales face living in a home which has less than 60% of the median UK household income. As we move from a decade of missed opportunity to a decade of austerity, we need action to tackle the underlying causes of child poverty because Labour's pledge to halve child poverty in Wales by 2010 is now in tatters. Hence our motion today expressing concern at child poverty levels in Wales and calling on the Welsh Government to review its Child Poverty Strategy to better address the underlying causes. As Joesph Rowntree found, around 60% of children in poverty live in a household where no-one works. 42% live in a household headed by one adult. 40% of children with a disabled parent are in poverty, compared with 25% of those with non-disabled parents. They stated that ‘despite the importance of employment to eradicating child poverty, welfare-to-work programmes have not been a prominent feature in the child poverty strategy in Wales’. In ‘What is needed to end child poverty in 2020?’ Hirsch argues that ‘improved routes into work’ is an area requiring a new drive if child poverty is to be eradicated. We need to remove the barriers to flexible and good quality employment, including family friendly working in public and private sectors – supporting benefit advice and take up for all vulnerable groups and working with the UK Government to remove barriers, including housing benefit, in the tax and benefit system. Measures to eradicate child poverty must adequately address the energy and housing needs of families with children. This follows a decade of devolved housing cuts, failure to tackle the root causes of addiction, widening education funding gaps and educational funding which has subsidised deprivation instead of targeting educational failure. On a visit to the Secure Children’s Home in Neath, I was told that most young offenders are on medication when they arrive, for conditions such as ADHD, but that many of these are taken off medication when effective early intervention for the first time in their lives indentifies and addresses underlining issues of trauma and psychosis. Communities First is the Welsh Government's flagship programme to improve the living conditions and prospects for people in the most disadvantaged communities across Wales. However, the Wales Audit Office Review of Communities First stated that the “programme has emerged from chaos, it was not planned, there was an absence of basic financial and human resource planning before the programme was launched and bids were therefore not assessed properly”. We should therefore not be surprised by current allegations of waste a worse ranging from Plas Madoc Wrexham to North Abergavenny. In it’s evidence on the Children and Families Measure, Children in Wales stated: “At the very beginning, there was a need to look at where the huge deprivation was to be found and to see where we could effectively target resources first. However, Flying Start and Communities First have been in place for some years. It is time to move on and to be a bit more flexible, so that we move away from the system in which one family on one side of the street can accessservices, support and free childcare, but a family across the street that is in a worse financial situation cannot.” The Joseph Rowntree Foundation expressed concerns about the Children and Families Measure’s ability to address child poverty if the strategy was to rely entirely on the Cymorth and Flying Start programmes. They said that research suggested there are more children in poverty living outside the areas designated as disadvantaged than inside them. They went on: “More broadly, relying on programmes that are geographically targeted to deliver on a goal that is household-based will cause some problems.Everything points to the two programmes being very good, and doing an immense amount of good, but it seems highly unlikely that they will be sufficient in themselves to deliver on the child poverty goal. There will be families that do not fall within those criteria that really need support”. The Children’s Commissioner supported this view, saying that. He said: “My office receives calls from families who see other families, perhaps across the road or in the neighbouring village, such is the targeting, accessingservices and support that they cannot access. You can explain the targeted approach to them and why it should be the case, but (…) it does not make a lotof sense to the people living in that community or having that experience.” We must therefore move from an area based to a Child centred approach and we will be supporting the Liberal Democrat amendment. Save the Children state that “there remains a relatively high likelihood of severe poverty among children in workless households. Children in workless households are more likely to be living in severe poverty than in non-severe poverty”. However, economic inactivity, in Wales, already the highest in the UK, has grown yet again - taking the combined number of working aged people in Wales not in work to 554,000, one in three - a truly shocking figure. This analysis reinforces a clear message. As Save the Children state, current government policy and support is clearly not reaching the children that need help the most. Further, the goal of eradicating child poverty once and for all will not be achieved unless urgent attention is given to meeting the needs of the poorest children and their families”. The National Child Minders Association have stated that the “Save the Children report should be of major concern to everyone living in Wales and the UK” … and “that the provision of quality home based, affordable childcare is one key method of combating child poverty”. They came to see me last week to identify huge gaps in provision now. The Children and Families (Wales) Measure reformed services to vulnerable children and families in Wales. When debating this measure, an opposition amendment requiring a Welsh Authority to consult with the voluntary sector was defeated by Labour and Plaid Cymru. The consequence of this is that the Barnardo’s Flintshire 'Families Matter’ service, indentified in the draft external evaluation report for the Welsh Government as the most effective pilot scheme for the Integrated Family Support Team Model launched by the Measure, is facing redundancies because of uncertainty over funding. Further, Local Authority pioneer teams have made no attempt to engage with them. Of course, material poverty is not the only concern. With the gap between rich and poor now the widest it’s been since World War II, what matters most to a child’s life chances is both the wealth of their upbringing and the warmth of their parenting. As Stephen Scott of the National Academy of Parenting Practitioners has said: “It seems to be poverty of the parent-child experience…that leads to poor child outcomes ”.
It can and should be argued that it is easier to achieve good parenting when there is material prosperity, but we will not build a fairer society unless we also recognise that what happens in the home really matters. |
