Ending child poverty: a child’s right or a parent’s responsibility?

This year the European Union will publish its Recommendation on Child Poverty. This is expected to be based on three ‘pillars’ – access to adequate resources, access to services and opportunities, and children’s participation – and to argue for a strong rights-based approach to eradicating child poverty. In 2011, the current coalition administration published the first government child poverty strategy in the UK. At its heart, lies a commitment to ‘strengthening families, encouraging responsibility, promoting work, guaranteeing fairness and providing support to the most vulnerable’. Tracy Shildrick and I explored these two very different approaches in an article for the current edition of the CPAG Poverty magazine.

The article can be found here

Other articles from the magazine can be found here

 

Hidden from sight: refugees and poverty

This week (18 – 24 June) is Refugee Week in the UK and so we thought it would be appropriate to do a short post on poverty amongst refugees and asylum seeking children and their families.

Earlier this year, The Children’s Society released a report into destitution amongst young refugees and asylum seekers called ‘I don’t feel human’. It notes that:

Having fled danger in their country of birth, they have to expose themselves to potential danger and harm in this country because they are excluded from support and adequate accommodation. They remain hidden from view and have to survive with minimal resources. Alarmingly their predicament is not an unintended consequence. Forced destitution has been a deliberate policy, introduced by the previous government to try and reduce what were seen to be ‘incentives’ for those coming to the UK to claim asylum. In its 2007 report, the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights noted that:

‘We have been pesuaded by the evidence that the government has indeed been practicing a deliberate policy of destitution of this highly vulnerable group [asylum seekers]. We believe that all deliberate use of inhumane treatment is unacceptable. We have seen instances in all cases where the government’s treatment of asylum seekers and refused asylum seekers falls below the requirements of the common law of humanity and international human rights law.’

Despite this criticism, the current government continues to withdraw and withhold support to refused asylum seekers as a way to expedite their return to their country of origin. This leaves many thousands of people, including children and young people, who cannot return to their country of origin, destitute for prolonged periods of time, sometimes several years, and without access to even the most basic welfare support. This particularly affects young children in the crucial early years of their life and damages the life chances of older children as they transition into adulthood. The experiences of destitute children and young people raise serious welfare concerns.

This is shocking and the report also notes that discussion around asylum seeking and refugee children has largely been absent from the child poverty debate. Indeed, children seeking asylum are not mentioned at all in the government strategy and discussion about refugees is limited to the following two sentences:

Language barriers or low/unrecognised qualifications can make finding work difficult for refugees. This, combined with the disruption and likely trauma suffered, can make work seem out of reach for a number of these families.

Much of the focus of the Children’s Society report is on asylum seekers who are either waiting for their claim to be heard or have had it refused and the destitution that they face during this time. There is less focus on how refugees fare once a claim for asylum has been upheld and this is also true more generally, from what I can gather. A report by the Scottish Poverty Information Unit in 2010 noted that:

There is a body of research across the UK that provides evidence of the experiences of poverty amongst asylum seekers (for example, see Mulvey 2009a; Hamilton and Harris, 2009; Doyle, 2008; Malfait, 2008). However, the situation of refugees is much more difficult to glean from existing research, so much so that, in their report on economic inequality in the UK, Hills et al could say little about refugee poverty, except to anticipate on the basis of qualitative studies that some asylum seekers and refugees “may be highly disadvantaged” (2010: 5). The ‘invisibility’ of refugees in administrative data collection systems arises in part because attainment of refugee status brings with it the status of ‘ordinary resident’. This means that individuals are not obliged to declare their refugee status (Aspinall and Watters, 2010: 134).

So, the HBAI figures released last week make no reference to the number of refugees who are living in poverty. They are, to all extents, invisible from current discussions and considerations. JRF do some excellent work around poverty and ethnicity, but this is not the same as looking at issues affecting refugees.

What we do know is that refugees will face similar problems as many other people trying to find work at the current time. There are not many jobs around, there is lots of competition for them, many are low-paid and insecure and many of them are concentrated in certain areas. Added to this, however, refugees face additional barriers including those highlighted above, but also through the discriminatory practices of employers and through potentially having less social and cultural capital to draw on to find work and access resources.

At a time when the government is very keen to help turn around the lives of the ‘most disadvantaged families’, one could argue that many refugees fall into that category. However, one could also argue that there is far more political capital to be made from ‘tackling’ problem families than there is from helping families of refugees…..

Best wishes,

Steve

Many thanks to Georgina Fletcher and the Regional Refugee Forum North East for much of the information above. Their website http://www.refugeevoices.org.uk/ is worth a visit and includes the transcribed testimonies of the impact on children and young people whose parents are not allowed to work

Poverty isn’t a lifestyle choice, but volunteering is.

“If we are to make poverty history, we must have the active participation of States, civil society and the private sector, as well as individual volunteers”

Kofi Annan

“You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.”

Winston Churchill

VONNE (Voluntary Organisations Network North East), an umbrella body for the third sector in the North East are today holding a Blog Action Day (BAD) for volunteers. The aim is to get people in the North East blogging about the value of volunteers on the first day on Volunteers Week 2012.

This post is my contribution to this event and it is, unsurprisingly, going to focus on the role of volunteers in tackling child poverty. As the quote from Kofi Annan above makes clear, if we are to end poverty, we will need the support of everyone to make it happen and volunteerism is key to this.

Volunteering can help to end poverty and can also help to improve the lives of those living in poverty. I’ll provide a couple of examples. All charities, including campaigning ones such as Save the Children or Child Poverty Action Group, are dependent on volunteers to serve as trustees. These volunteers might not be involved in direct service delivery with families or children, but they play a key role in organisations which aim to influence policy and hold politicians to account.

The North East Child Poverty Commission is currently discussing with the Durham Students Union how to provide volunteer work placements for students to undertake around their studies(or as part of them) that are beneficial for both us and the students. We’re identifying a number of specific projects such as pieces of research we want carrying out, helping to organise a conference, developing our social media work etc that we’re hopeful students will be able to help us with later on this year.

My own experience as a volunteer (trying desperately hard not to sound like Smashy and Nicey at this point) has involved coaching football in the East end of Newcastle with children who lived in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the North East. The club was run entirely by volunteers and I’d like to think that it made – and continues to make – some kind of difference to the players, their families and the local community. I’m also a governor at a school in the West end of Newcastle which is in the ward in the North East with the highest proportion of children living in poverty. It’s early days, but again, I’d like to think that my time there isn’t completely wasted and whatever knowledge I have might be of some use to the school in supporting pupils and parents from disadvantaged backgrounds.

There are lots more examples of the role that volunteers play in tackling poverty. Unions often help to improve pay working conditions for employees and their Learning reps help people to progress in work through acquiring new skills. Advice centres are heavily reliant on volunteers to help them provide advice and support to people with benefit and debt problems – an unintentional growth industry at the present time. Children’s Centres, schools and youth clubs have always relied on volunteers to extend the scope and capacity of the services they offer to children and young people and this is certainly the case at the moment. Food banks are becoming increasingly important to growing numbers of people across the country at the present time and the venture in the North East is delivered entirely through volunteers.

But volunteering alone isn’t going to eradicate child poverty. We know that. And it shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for public service provision. We need politicians to act to end child poverty, but there is a vital role that volunteers and businesses and wider civil society can play in helping this to happen.

Firstly, most political parties are dependent upon small armies of members who volunteer to undertake tasks for them – one might even suggest there is a ‘culture of dependency’ on these members within political parties. Their voice is important, although it may not always appear so. Secondly, the voluntary sector (in the shape of the Give it Back George campaign) had a tremendous result yesterday with the government announcing a u-turn on the cap on tax relief on charitable donations and CPAG recently led a campaign which included some national newspapers to save child benefit which yielded a partial rethink by the government. Thirdly, Greggs, a North East business with a strong interest in child poverty and a strong supporter of local charities, have led a campaign that has resulted in another successful u-turn on the so-called ‘pasty tax’. These campaigns show that with enough support and momentum, politicians can be for turning. Imagine what could happen if all 3 united in agreement to REALLY end child poverty. We might end up with something more substantial to celebrate than cheap luke warm pasties and tax breaks for millionaires….

So, please visit the VONNE blog to see other contributions to the BAD (and follow the action on Twitter using the #BADVolunteers and, if you don’t currently volunteer, please remember

“No-one made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little”

Edmund Burke

Freedom’s just another word……

I have recently had cause to re-acquaint myself with the Government’s Child Poverty Strategy and was struck by often the word ‘freedom’ is used. It appears 9 times in total, all in relation to reforms which will ‘strip away’ or ‘lift the burden of’ bureaucracy. The full list of appearances is below:

…radical reform of the skills system based on the Coalition principles of fairness, responsibility and freedom.

They (Work Programme providers) will have the freedom to design and implement innovative services which focus on individuals’ needs.

…giving local authorities the freedom to make better use of social housing through control of their own income, expenditure and planning process.

 The White Paper sets out how the Academy programme raises standards, particularly in disadvantaged areas, by giving power and freedom back to head teachers and teachers.

 We want teachers to have greater freedom to use their professionalism and expertise in order to help all children progress

 the transparency agenda will reinforce these new freedoms, allowing communities to influence and challenge their local services

The new Work Programme will give providers the freedom to tailor help to individuals and in return will pay according to results

The Government is currently reviewing these and other statutory duties to make sure they strike the right balance between giving local authorities the freedom and discretion they need to get things done, whilst protecting the most vulnerable people

Our reforms will strip away bureaucracy and give local partners the freedom to focus on the needs of communities whilst being held accountable for achieving positive outcomes for families

In contrast, other words and phrases that one might expect to feature regularly in a child poverty strategy do not appear nearly as often:

 the word ‘rights‘ only appears in the main text of the document four times, and only once in relation to children’s rights.

‘in-work poverty’ only appears twice in the main text, despite over half of the children in poverty living in a household where an adult works.

‘adequate’ and ‘minimum’ do not appear at all in the main body of the text

‘standard of living’ appears twice – in the context of severe poverty: ‘Evidence suggests that there are those with seemingly very low incomes who still have a reasonable standard of living’

So freedom from state bureaucracy obviously plays an important role in the ‘new approach’ to tackling child poverty and the ‘old approach’ is characterised as being over-generous with benefits, leading to ‘entrenched benefit dependency’.  However, this focus on freedom for service providers reminded me of a chapter I read in the David Harvey book ‘A brief history of neo-liberalism’ a little while ago. He argues, with the help of Karl Polanyi, that:

Planning and control are being attacked as a denial of freedom. Free enterprise and private ownership are declared to be essentials of freedom. No society built on other foundations is said to deserve to be called free. The freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery

He goes on to say that:

the idea of freedom … degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise, which means ‘the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property’

At a time when non-participation in the labour market brings increased attention from the state through a variety of ‘capability assessments’, ‘work experience’ style programmes and the potential extension of conditionality to those in work, it is, perhaps, a surprising contrast to look at the extent of the freedom from state intervention being proposed for service providers.

Any thoughts?

Steve

***Update*** Adrian Sinfield contacted me today (18/05/2012) to provide me with a quote from an older Conservative MP, Harold Macmillan, who declared in 1938, in The Middle Way, that:

‘Freedom and poverty cannot live together. It is only in so far as poverty is abolished that freedom is increased’ (1938, pp 371-2).

Quite a contrast from the ‘new’ approach.

Many thanks Adrian,

Steve

Ensuring a Healthy standard of living for all

The only one of the six recommendations that the Marmot Review on Health Inequalities that hasn’t been taken up by the Coalition Government is ‘Ensuring a Healthy standard of living for all’.

Last week we responded to a Department of Health consultation on health outcomes for children and young people. The consultation focused on a number of health related outcomes but our response focused solely on public health issues and the role that poverty and inequality play in children’s health and health inequalities. This post is based on our response, which framed ‘the health service’ in the context of a broader welfare state. Our response drew on existing evidence and was largely based on 2 summary papers published by the End Child Poverty campaign. These reports, along with other background reading I undertook, proved to be painful reminders of the effects of poverty. ‘Poverty’ may be a social construction (or a political one as someone suggested to me last week, asking why I ‘envied’ the rich) but the effects of poverty and inequality are well documented social facts that cannot be denied. The government’s child poverty strategy refers to the ‘so-called’ social gradient, although health does feature quite prominently in the document, mainly in relation to funding and structural reforms which will ‘incentivise’ improved health outcomes for poorer communities.

Sections in bold are questions asked by the consultation documents. 

In your view, where is the health service falling short for children and young people, what is our weakest link and what can we do to improve things to make sure it makes a real difference to the lives of children and young people?

The NHS / ‘health service’ is not the only tool at the government’s or society’s disposal to improve health, especially where public health is concerned. It is with public health outcomes for children and young people, especially those living in poverty or low-incomes that this response is concerned with.

We believe that the health service is falling short for children and young people by not adopting the 6^th and final recommendation of the Marmot Review: Ensuring a Healthy standard of living for all[1]. The priority objectives within this Policy Objective (D) propose:

1.  a minimum income for healthy living for people of all ages,
2. a reduction of the social gradient of living through progressive taxation and fiscal policies
3. reducing the cliff edge faced by people moving between benefits and work.

There is a large amount of evidence (which will be known to the health service and does not need recounting here) which demonstrates that making progress on these 3 fronts would have a significant positive impact on the health and well-being of children and young people from poorer families.

The ‘weakest link’, we would argue, is the number of children living in or at risk of poverty in the UK. In a paper for the End Child Poverty campaign[2] Donald Hirsch and Professor Nick Spencer have written that: ‘Poverty is the greatest preventable threat to health, and tackling it is fundamental to addressing health Inequalities and boosting life chances’

and that the

evidence has profound implications for public policy. It suggests that effective action to tackle child poverty would make an important long-term contribution to many health-related policy objectives, including reducing obesity, reducing heart disease, increasing breast feeding and improving mental health.

Not only does child poverty affect health during childhood, but it also affects adult health as well. In a separate paper[3] drawing on over 70 different studies, Professor Spencer argues that:

it is now clear that poverty and low socio-economic status in early life adversely affect health in ways that transmit across time and contribute to poor adult health. In other words, poor social circumstances in childhood are associated with poor health both in childhood itself and in adult life

In the UK, we are aware of the Inverse Care Law, where the people that need health services the most are the least likely to access them and often receive the worst treatment. Professor Danny Dorling, in a recent book called ‘So you think you know about Britain’ highlighted that:

‘our doctors tend to live and work in the areas where the fewest people are ill (which is in no small part caused by drawing almost all young medics from such a narrow set of privileged backgrounds and then paying them so highly for their services)’.[4]

Dorling also notes a ‘positive care law’ in relation to

‘the correlation between the locations of the population with health needs and those providing many hours of unpaid care a week.’[5]

A ‘revaluing of care’ is needed so that care provided by parents and carers for children and young people is recognised. The financial cost of having children should be recognised through the benefits system but unfortunately a number of child and maternity related benefits have either been stopped or frozen, reducing their real value. In a paper called ‘The Cuts: what they mean for families at risk of poverty’ CPAG highlight that a baby born in a low income family in April 2011 is ‘around £1,500 worse off compared to a sibling born in April 2010’.[6]

With so many different parts of the health system in place, what do they need to focus on and improve to make sure they each work together to deliver the best possible health service for children and young people ?

 The work of ‘You’re Welcome’ is important in ensuring that health services take the needs and views of children and young people into account when designing and delivering services.

At a time of unprecedented change and fragmentation of services within the NHS, it is difficult to know how the health system will emerge but we would argue that addressing the social determinants of health and the income inequalities that exist within our society are as important as changing the structure of the NHS. Dorling notes that, despite recent re-structuring and increased spending in the NHS:

In poorer neighbourhoods in poorer parts of the country mortality rates have hardly fallen in the most recent decade and the numbers of people reporting they are suffering from a debilitating illness have risen quickly. In contrast, in the most affluent areas of the country, life expectancy has in some years been rising by more than a year per year, a rate that is impossible to achieve for long without securing immortality, and rates of reported illness and disability in such places have been falling rapidly.[7]

We know that socio-economic status has a profound impact on children’s health – and that of their parents and it is these underlying causes of poor health that need to be addressed as urgently , if not more so, than changes to the structures of clinical health services.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?

The profound impact that poverty and low income has on health is already well known and relatively uncontested. As such, there is not much more that we can tell you.

It is, however, unfortunate that despite this knowledge, independent estimates predict that the government’s policies will see an increase in child poverty in the coming years[8]. This news comes at a time when low income families are facing large reductions in their standards of living. As such, it is unclear how the health of these children will improve when their economic and material circumstances are deteriorating.

We have known since Victorian times that poverty affects health and so eradicating poverty must be central to any attempts to improve the health outcomes of children and young people. Dorling illustrates this graphically when he writes[9]:

‘Unfortunately, we will always suffer from child mortality, but there is no good reason, other than because of our greed and ignorance, for those mortality rates to be higher for children from poor families.’

You still have time to respond to the consultation as the deadline was extended until 31 May 2012. The link to the consultation is below:

http://healthandcare.dh.gov.uk/children-say/

---

[1] Fair Society, Healthy Lives, The Marmot Review, 2010

[2] Unhealthy Lives, End Child Poverty. Available here: www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/…/Intergenerational_Links_between_c..

[3] Childhood Poverty and Adult Health, End Child Poverty. Available here: www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/…/Childhood_Poverty_and_Adult_Hea… Similar

[4] So You Think You Know About Britain, Dorling 2011, p145

[5] Ibid, p146

[6] The Cuts: what they mean for families at risk of poverty, CPAG, 2012. Available here:  www.cpag.org.uk/CPAG_The_Cuts_what_they_%20mean_feb%202…

[7] So You Think You Know About Britain, Dorling 2011, p144

[8] Child and Working Age Poverty from 2010 – 2020, Institute for Fiscal Studies 2011. Available here: http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/5710

[9] So You Think You Know About Britain, Dorling 2011, p140

High hopes…….

Last week, Joseph Rowntree Foundation published 3 papers exploring the role of Aspirations, Attitudes and Behaviours (AABs) in educational outcomes. We have already blogged on this subject a couple of months ago, following a seminar led by Professor Liz Todd, the lead author of one of the JRF reports. This post aims to provide an update following the publication of the JRF reports and attempts to demonstrate why this issue is so important to policy and practice around improving outcomes for disadvantaged children and young people.

As part of a piece of work looking at how local authorities in the North East fulfilled the ‘local duties’ of the Child Poverty Act, I looked at a  number of their Child Poverty Needs Assessments and strategies. Four authorities (out of 12) highlighted ‘raising aspirations’ as a priority for them. Below are a selection of quotes from these documents:

Raise aspirations and expectations of deprived children, families and communities – Transforming the aspirations and ambitions of children growing up in poverty and their families is essential if we are to tackle child poverty. Parental aspirations and ambitions for their children can have a significant impact on life chances

There are parents who have had bad experience of schooling and do not see the benefit of education; this attitude perpetuates the continuous cycle of low aspirations.

Research carried out in 2010 … revelaed low aspiration levels in some areas, in many cases as a result of second and third generation family unemployment. Further work in other areas has also shown low aspirations to underpin many ‘negative outcomes’, such as poor attainment, teenage conceptions and anti-social behaviour.

Raising aspirations in our children and young people is important because they influence outcomes.

Some of the most disadvantaged children in the borough suffer from low aspirations and limited ‘mental geography’

Local authorities are not the only organisations in the region who believe that young people (and parents) from poorer backgrounds may need their aspirations raising. Each of the 5 Universities in the region have participated in programmes designed to raise aspirations amongst local children and young people. Newcastle University advertised for a manager for the ‘NE Aspiration Raising Partnership’ in March of this year. For those interested in finding out more about these, using a search engine brings up results for each of the universities but the language is very similar to that which local authorities use:

helps to raise educational aspirations among ‘harder to reach’ groups

We are delighted to be working in partnership … to raise the aspirations and opportunities available for people in the region

There are more examples. The school where I am a parent governor has ‘We seek to raise aspirations…’ as the first words of it’s Vision Statement and a regional conference was organised in 2009 focusing on ‘Raising and Realising Aspirations’. In summary, there appears to be strong consensus that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have low aspirations which need to be raised and, given the involvement of the universities, one would expect some good evidence to support these policies.

However, the JRF reports offer up an alternative view, with one of the main issues being around the quality and quantity of evidence available in this area. Below are some quotations from the 3 reports that were published last week:

If attitudes and aspirations do cause higher levels of attainment, then appropriate interventions can be developed. But if they do not, then money and effort is being wasted on approaches that may even have damaging side effects. (1)

 The review confirmed the association between children’s expectations/aspirations and their attainment. However, the evidence falls short of that needed to assume that it is a causal influence, because no relevant rigorous evaluations of interventions were found. There were no good indications that a child’s aspirations could influence later participation (1)

Our research reinforced the insight that children and parents from low income families have high aspirations and value school, and that parents by and large try their best to support their children’s education. There is evidence that teachers and other professionals may underestimate the aspirations of socio-economically disadvantaged children and parents and not appreciate the importance with which school is viewed. (2)

 The widespread emphasis on raising aspirations, in particular, does not seem to be a good foundation for policy or practice (2)

 Teachers and other professionals may need to revise upwards their estimation of the aspirations of parents and children. (2)

The immediate focus should be on rolling-out and monitoring the implementation of interventions where there is already good evidence, particularly in the area of parental involvement. Interventions in this area should have a clear focus on providing information, support and advice to parents and children, rather than continuing to seek to raise aspirations which are already generally high (3)

It is worth repeating what the Todd et al report says:

The widespread emphasis on raising aspirations, in particular, does not seem to be a good foundation for policy or practice

For what it’s worth, I have yet to come across a parent who didn’t want the best for their child or children and I have not come across many young people in the region (or elsewhere) who have wanted to ‘under-achieve’. Our previous blog highlighted that ‘aspirations’ is used in many different ways and to mean different things and it perhaps isn’t helpful to look at them as linear (low- high). People have very different aspirations for themselves and/or their children, many of which don’t relate to educational attainment or going on to higher education.

As this has been identified as such an important area for tackling child poverty and improving educational attainment amongst poorer children in the North East, it will be very interesting to follow how their policies unfold and develop and whether the JRF research has any ‘impact’. It is worth noting that JRF have already been very supportive of getting this work disseminated in the region and supported the event that Liz Todd presented at recently.

I’ll end by recounting what a prominent and well-respected academic in the North East told me when I broached this subject with them a few months ago:

‘Frankly, some of the stuff I read about young people’s aspirations makes me want to puke.’

What do you think?

Best wishes,

Steve

What do people think?

(1) http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/aspirations-educational-attainment-participation

(2)

(3) http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/aspirations-attitudes-educational-attainment-roundup

CPAG Guest Post: Save Child Benefit

For over 100 years the British tax and benefit system has recognised the costs of raising children. Families with children, whatever their income, have higher costs than families who do not have children. Since 1977, these costs have been recognised in the tax and benefit system through universal Child Benefit (CB) payments. However this is set to change in 2013, when Child Benefit will be taxed back from families with a higher rate tax payer. While the announcements in the budget – which were widely tipped to fix the problem – were a step in the right direction, they by no means fixed the problem. In fact, they missed the point entirely.

When Child benefit payments stop being universal next year, the UK will join Italy as only the second developed country that does not recognise the costs of children in the tax and benefit system. Families with children have higher costs than those without children – regardless of the household earnings. The question of fairness should not be if a household earning £50,000 needs CB or not, it should be a question of fairness between households earning £50,000 who cover the costs of raising happy, healthy children, and those earning £50,000 who do not.

When the claw-back was announced as a back of an envelope idea at the 2010 Conservative Party Conference, George Osborne declared that any household with a higher rate tax payer would lose CB. Without any clear vision of how this might work, it was suggested that all higher tax rate payers would have the entire value of their household’s CB added to their tax bill at the end of the year. Instead, under the announcements made in the budget, families with one earner taking home over £50,000pa will have 1% of their CB taxed back for every £100 they earn. Rather than being thrown down a cliff edge, families are being pushed down a flight of steps; the tax and benefit system will still cease recognising the costs of raising children.

Children are not a private luxury, and while it might sound clichéd, they quite literally are the future of our society. Child benefit plays a crucial role, it is the means through which society contributes to a small part of the costs of raising the next generation.

On top of this unfair claw-back, CB rates have been frozen for three years, which will see their value decline by over 10 percent in real terms. This cut will hit all families, including those with incomes too low to pay tax in the first place.

The Child Poverty Action Group researched what these two changes will mean to families across the income scale. We surveyed over 350 parents who spoke about dreading these changes, and having to cut back on necessities, like food and fuel, as well as missing out on important treats, like buying birthday presents or going camping. Some parents had already planned strategies on how to stretch family budgets even further, such as going without childcare or seeing relatives, but too many simply did not know how they were going to cut back. Parents felt that payments made for children, and spent on children, were being cut to deal with the deficit. No parent thought their child should pay for the financial crisis.

But importantly, the report (accessible by clicking here or on the image above) also highlighted how crucial Child Benefit payments were for family incomes, right across the income scale. We polled 650 parents and found that CB was spent overwhelmingly on meeting children’s needs (on items such as children’s clothing) or on household needs (like bills and mortgages). As Child benefit payments shrink or are taken away in 100 tiny cuts, so too will families ability to meet these needs.

Child Benefit needs to remain universal, to recognise costs of raising children that all families with children bear. Removing it from some families in tiny cuts to pay for the deficit is faulty logic. All wealthy households, including and especially those without children, should pay their fair share – this is done through progressive taxation, not a tax on Child Benefit. Child Benefit rates also need to be restored in line with inflation. With many families finding it harder to provide for their children, it makes no sense to cut payments that are spent on children.

Rys Farthing

Child Poverty Action Group

CPAG is the leading charity campaigning for the abolition of child poverty in the UK and for a better deal for low-income families and children.

Visit the CPAG website here

Weekly Round up 30/03/2012

News in Brief

Riot report 

The Independent Riots Communities and Victims Panel released their report this week and the press gave attention to 500,000 ‘forgotten families’. The Guardian letters page looked at the ‘riot’s deeper roots in poverty and alienation’, the Family and Parenting Institute released a very brief statement but which was made the very clear point that parenting ‘does not take place in a vacuum’ and the Centre for Social Justice released their response which suggested that:

“From chaotic families, failed parenting, absent fathers and 16 year old school pupils utterly unprepared for the real world, to a revolving door prison system which does nothing to change lives. The riots were a disgraceful warning shot from a drifting generation which is cut off from the mainstream of society “

The mid-week post next week will hopefully be about the apparent ‘mixing’ of the troubled families and child poverty agendas, following on from a discussion at a recent policy network meeting a couple of weeks back.

Thriving or Surviving Survey

Together with VONNE, the North East Child Poverty Commission are carrying out a survey exploring the effects of the cuts of children and young people’s charities and voluntary organisations in the North East. If you are a voluntary sector organisation in the region that delivers services to children and young people, please take 10 minutes or so to tell us about the impact on your organisation. The survey can be found here.

Regional Economy  

A blog on the New Start website looked at the ‘problem with regional pay’, a Survation poll compiled on behalf of Progressive Polling  showed little support for regional pay and The Economist looked at what an independent Scotland might mean for the North East. Meanwhile, Channel 4 reported that Britain’s working poor were ‘at tipping point’

General comment

Sir Stuart Rose (of Marks and Spencer fame) suggested that ‘we need to have an urgent debate on pay’

A very interesting post on the Arts Council website highlighted the role that libraries can play in tackling poverty

And an article from America looked at the specific issues that single mothers face in trying to escape poverty

Signposts

The new national and independent Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission are now looking to appoint members

The Centre for Economic & Social Inclusion updated their Child Poverty Toolkit facility

As part of the Danish Presidency of the European Council 2012, a conference was held on the themes of children’s rights and child poverty

Graphics of the week

Public responses to the proposal to introduce regional pay, courtesy of Left Foot Forward

Best wishes,

Steve

Weekly Round up 23/03/2012

Apologies for missing the weekly round-up last week but time was a bit tight and basically everyone was talking about what might happen in the Budget so we thought it might be better to leave it and let everyone talk about what did happen in the budget before posting again……

News in Brief

Budget 

It’s been covered in great detail elsewhere so we won’t spend too long on the Budget here. But, JRF produced a very good briefing on what the budget meant for child poverty and IPPR looked at the impact of the budget on the North.

The Guardian asked a panel of experts, inclduing Alison Garnham, Chief Exec of CPAG. for their views and The IFS produced a good summary of the whole thing in 13 slides. The figure below is taken from the chapter on the impact on Households within the Budget document (available here), which shows that the poorest quintile of households suffered the most, with exception of the richest quintile

Regional Pay was a Budget issue that concerned people in the North East and The Journal and the Shields Gazette and the Sunderland Echo all covered this issue from a North East perspective, The Guardian suggested it could lead to regional shortages of teachers and the TUC launched a Pay Fair campaign on Twitter

Employment

JRF and Women Like Us produced a very interesting piece of work on the benefits (and challenges) of building a sustainable quality part-time recruitment marketwhile, coincidentally, Salon published a piece by Sara Robinson which suggested that 150 years of research proves that long hours at work kill profits, productivity and employees.

The TUC published their latest Employment Blackspots and the North East was , unfortunately, well represented. Middlebrough was the second hardest place to get a job with approximately 24 claimants for every vacancy and threee other Local Authorities in the North East in the top 10 for youth unemployment.

Education – pupil premium

The Guardian published some data obtained by David Lammy MP that suggested that the Pupil Premium was ending up in places where it might be hard to argue it was most needed. The Full Fact website checked out this assertion a few weeks ago….

General comment

Lots of comment this week to distract you from the Budget….

Fraser Nelson argued in The Telegraph that ‘At the heart of the Child Poverty Act lies an agenda which has arguably done more damage to Britain’s social fabric than any idea in modern history’ 

David Brady argued for a wider view of the welfare state in The Guardian, who also featured articles on ‘the working poor’ in the UK today and the supposed ‘culture of poverty’ in the US – all worth reading.

The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships published a report on Parenting on a Low Income and The Nuffield Foundation published a report exploring the role of informal childcare in the UK.

Graphics of the week

An excellent graph from the New Economics Foundation who called the the budget one ‘for the 1%’. The graph, which will get bigger if you click on it, suggests that it is not the size of our public sector debt that should be the primary concern of our nation….

Best wishes,

Steve

Wel-unfare: Benefit fraud, error and philanthropy

The issue of benefit fraud often receives some pretty harsh coverage in sections of the media and some politicians are also prone to making unhelpful statements about what is actually a very small minority of benefit recipients. What doesn’t receive as much coverage is the underclaiming of certain benefits and it is this issue that is the focus of this post. This post is also not a defence of fraudulent activity within the benefit system.

Fraud and Error

Fraud and error within the benefits system are often reported together, which many people have criticised as they are both separate issues. This way of doing things means that the figure reported for fraud and error is higher than that for fraud alone. According to a press release by the DWP on 23 February 2012 titled ‘Universal Credit – weapon against benefit fraudsters’ (my emphasis) the figures lost to fraud and error were as follows:

• £1.2 billion lost to fraud
• £1.3 billion lost to customer error
• £0.8 billion lost to official error

So error accounts for approximately 1.5 times as much lost as fraud with a total for the two combined of around £3.3.billion. The press release also documents new powers which will introduce tougher penalties for fraudsters. These figures and the press release were based on a lengthy report called ‘Fraud and Error in thew Benefit System’.

Benefit Fraud campaigns

The DWP also run a campaign to catch people attempting to defraud the benefits system. The campaign, which is as far as I can tell, the only one promoted on their website, is called ‘Benefit Thieves – it’s not if we catch you, it’s when’ which states that all ‘benefit fraud is benefit theft.’ Below are some images from the campaign.

The Sun has also started a ‘Beat the Cheat’ campaign recently and in December, Crimestoppers launched a campaign targeting benefit fraud called ‘Wel- un -Fare’, shown at the top of the post. This campaign received front page coverage in the Daily Express under the heading ‘New Blitz on Benefit Cheats’

Take up of Benefits 0r ‘Benefit Philanthropy’

On the same day that the Fraud and Error report was published, the DWP also published a report on ‘Estimate of Take-up in the benefit system’. This publication wasn’t, according to the DWP website, accompanied by a press-release. At 214 pages, it is a lengthy report but on page ii in the Executive Summary, the report notes that:

Taking all six income-related benefits together, there was between £7.52 billion and £12.31 billion left unclaimed in 2009-10; this compared to £40.56 billion that was claimed and represents take-up by expenditure of between about 77 per cent and 84 per cent. (my emphasis).

Unlike benefit fraud which costs approximately £1.2 billion, there are, to the best of my knowledge, no national campaigns or media coverage targeting what could be called ‘benefit philanthropists’ – those that do not claim or receive the £7-12 billion in benefits that they are entitled to. Incredibly, approximately 4 in ten people who are entitled to Jobseekers Allowance do not claim it. (This issue has been covered in a recent post on the Inequalities blog by Ben Blaumberg which can be found here). People who are unemployed are likely to be on some of the lowest incomes in our society and so, one would imagine, they meet the definition of the ‘most disadvantaged’ families or individuals that are mentioned 19 times in the government’s child poverty strategy.

Universal Credit is supposed to address some of the complexity in the benefits system that can put people off claiming and there are other issues around the stigmatization of claiming as well, but we shouldn’t wait until Univeral Credit is introduced to see this issue addressed. If this unclaimed money was received by the people entitled to it, it would almost certainly enter the economy and would probably not be put into savings accounts or investments. In 1909, Winston Churchill, talking about the benefits of the ‘old age pension’ said:

Nearly eight millions (pounds) of money are being sent circulating through unusual channels, long frozen by poverty in the homes of the poor, flowing through the little shops that cater to their needs, cementing again family unions which harsh fate was tearing asunder, uniting the wife to the husband and the parent to the child’

and Paul Spicker, more recently, made a similar point in a post about stimulating the economy on his blog. His post was about one-off aditional payments to certain recipients of benefits but the advantage of improving the flow of money to the poorest people remains the same. He said:

The distributive effect would be generally progressive (it could be made more progressive still if the payments are treated as taxable); and it would lead to an immediate, localised stimulus to spending that would fall roughly in proportion to the prevalence of deprivation.  And if such payments happened to do a little to alleviate child poverty, that is a side-effect I think we should be able to bear with equanimity.

A New Campaign?

Given that it looks unlikely that the popular media will start a campaign on this issue in the near future, I would like to ask if any of our readers have the capacity, resources and inclination to start or help with an on-line campaign highlighting benefit philanthropy or a new generation of ragged trousered philanthropists or something similar? I don’t have the necessary skill to do this but I’m sure it’s not a huge task for someone who knows their way around a computer and a social network site or two better than I do….

Please get in touch – or get parodying –  if you are interested…..

Best wishes,

Steve