Policy | Submission on Actions to Achieve Child Poverty Reduction Target
One Family welcomes the launch of a document on child poverty that puts forward real solutions to Government to end child poverty in all its forms. Developed under the auspices of the National Advisory Council on Children and Young People by a subgroup of members including One Family, it offers recommendations that can help Government to meet their commitment to lift 97,000 children out of poverty by 2020.
Recent statistics from the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC 2015) showed that children living in one-parent families had the highest consistent poverty rate at 26.2%, an increase from 25% in 2014. This is compared to a consistent poverty rate of 7.7% for two-parent households. This means that children living in these households are almost four times more likely to be experiencing consistent poverty on a daily basis.
Consistent poverty means that children are living in households with incomes below €229 per week and experiencing deprivation such as not being able to replace worn shoes and going without heating through lack of money.
This paper recommends changes across a range of State services including health, education, social protection and family services.
From its outset, the National Advisory Council on Children and Young People has identified child poverty as the single biggest concern that impacts across all aspects of children’s lives, denies them their rights, and limits their life chances in many ways. In October 2015, a child poverty subgroup was established under the auspices of the Advisory Council under Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures. The subgroup comprises both statutory and non-governmental (NGO) representatives, including One Family, and was co-convened by the Department of Social Protection and the Children’s Rights Alliance.
The NGO representatives on this subgroup – Barnardos, the Children’s Rights Alliance, the National Youth Council of Ireland, One Family and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul – have developed this paper to inform the whole of Government approach to tackling the number of children in consistent poverty.
While the Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures Policy Framework includes an ambitious target to reduce the incidence of child poverty by 2020, the reality is that the situation is getting worse, not better. Therefore, the Advisory Council believes that there is a need for both statutory and non-statutory bodies to redouble their efforts towards the reversal of this negative trend. This new paper will contribute to this aim.
You can read the paper here.