Inventing our future Collective action for a sustainable economy

Regional Social Strategy – the strategy to achieve social inclusion throughout the East of England
2.3 – SO3: To improve the life chances of children from disadvantaged backgrounds and
support vulnerable young people in the transition to adulthood
i) Child poverty
Child poverty is particularly damaging because it has a long-term detrimental effect on people’s lives and across
generations. Research has shown that even when they are in their 30s, adults have less chance of working and
more chance of low pay if their families faced financial hardships when they were growing up. Child poverty must
be seen in the context of the wider difficulties often experienced by disadvantaged children and families such as
poor health, low qualifications, anti-social behaviour and, for a minority of children, living in care.
Despite being a wealthy nation, the UK has comparatively high levels of child poverty. The Government has
set a target to halve the number of children in relative low-income households, on the way to eradicating child
poverty by 2020. Although there are now 600,000 fewer children nationally in poverty, to achieve the target
set for 2010 a further 1.2 million children need to be lifted out of poverty. In May 2006 tackling child poverty
became the DWP’s number one priority.
Lisa Harker, former Chief Executive of the Daycare Trust, was appointed independent advisor on child poverty
to the DWP in June 2006. Her report, Delivering on Child Poverty: what would it take?, was published in
November 2006. The report argues that there has been an emphasis on helping lone parents back to work
and that to meet child poverty targets activities need to be more attuned to the needs of parents in general,
not just lone parents. The report goes on to say that for many parents a move into work is an escape from
poverty, but in around 1 in 3 cases gaining a job means moving from non-working poor to working poor.
Whilst persistent poverty has fallen in non-working households it has not decreased in working households
– nearly half (48%) of all children in poverty now live in families where there is someone in work.
Child Poverty in Perspective: an overview of child well-being in rich countries was published by UNICEF in
February 2007 and is the first study of childhood across the world's industrialised nations. UNICEF looked
at 40 indicators from the years 2000-2003 including poverty, family relationships and health and placed the
UK bottom of a league table for child well-being across 21 industrialised countries.
In response to Lisa Harker, UNICEF and a number of other reports, in March 2007 DWP published Working for
Children which confirms the commitment to eradicate child poverty and sets out a number of new measures.
ii) Parenting
There is growing evidence of the importance of the nature of parenting in achieving good outcomes for all
children and young people. The government initiative, Every Child Matters, 2003, emphasises the bond
between the child and his or her parents as being the most critical influence on a child’s life. It is important
that this bond is established very early in a child’s life, is strengthened by activities in the early months and
is positively reinforced throughout the development of a young person. Where the relationship has been
weakened or has not developed, the child has less resilience at any age or circumstances to deal with the
normal developmental processes which he or she will encounter and will be more vulnerable to negative
external influences, such as peer pressure to misuse substances. Children whose parents have supported
their development build confidence and ability. Where there are additional difficulties, such as child poverty,
the effect of poor parenting may be exacerbated.
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