End child poverty

One of the Government’s boldest pledges is to end child poverty within a generation. It’s an ambition we desperately need to achieve: 1 in 4 children in Britain, some 3.5 million, are growing up below the poverty line.

Yet recent research for the Fabian Commission on Child Poverty and Lifechances demonstrated how little public awareness exists of child poverty in Britain today, and, where child poverty is acknowledged, is felt to be the fault of inadequate parenting. Only when it was explained to those interviewed by researchers that parents could be working and yet unable to support a family, and that children grow up without what were readily perceived as essential childhood items and experiences, did attitudes shift.

It’s clear that bold political leadership will be needed if we are to persuade a sceptical public of the need for action.

Yet so far the political response has been limited – limited both in policy terms, and in seeking to lead public opinion.

On the policy side, attention has focussed on measures introduced by central government to tackle the income poverty which underlies the government's own target: Child Poverty Action Group and End Child Poverty welcome investment in tax credits, New Deals, the national minimum wage, and increases in child benefit. But still the government is already likely to fall short of its own first milestone, to reduce child poverty by a quarter by 2004-05. Far greater effort and investment is needed if it is to stay on track to meet the next target of halving child poverty by 2010.

Local government has a part to play here, helping to maximise take-up, and ensuring the efficient administration of benefits (like housing benefit and council tax benefit) falling within its control. Local councils can also look at their own employment practices and ensure employees are not living below the poverty line.

It is however in the wider policy context that local government can really make its mark. Every Child Matters offers a framework for tackling inequality and improving lifechances, essential to complement measures to tackle income poverty - and local authorities are centre-stage. It is in our schools, neighbourhoods, and children's services, that the steps to unwind the massive social inequality that exists in Britain can and must be taken.

We would like every local authority to produce a local child poverty strategy which works to the Every Child Matters framework with the goal of eradicating child poverty – for today’s children as they grow up, and to improve their future economic well-being. Particularly as the extended school becomes the hub of child-focussed policy we urge local authorities to ensure that the add-on “costs” of school (activities, uniforms, meals) are minimised so as not to shut our poorest children out.

But in another respect too local government has an important role. Ministers have been remarkably coy about their child poverty ambitions, preferring, as Ruth Lister has noted, to do good by stealth. Despite promises from Secretaries of State to ‘shout from the rooftops’ we would like to hear and see them demonstrate far greater leadership and boldness in sending a message to the public that child poverty can be tackled, that it is both morally imperative and economically sensible to do so.

Perhaps locally political leaders can be less coy. Earlier this year End Child Poverty organised roadshows in each region in England supported by, among others, local councillors and officials. Local media were very interested in the issue – writing and broadcasting lead stories and producing double page spreads - but some councillors were sceptical about child poverty in their areas. Not all children living in poverty are in the most deprived areas: wherever they are, we need to make sure their lives are not blighted.

Child poverty impoverishes all of us. The policy framework exists to tackle it, but what we need most urgently now is full-on political leadership, locally and nationally, to end it - once and for all.

Kate Green, is Chief Executive of the Child Poverty Action Group
Jonathan Stearn is Director of End Child

PovertyPublished in Local Government First, November 2005.