9,000 children in poverty: A damning indictment of failure, warn Derry & Strabane reps

A report tabled by representatives from the office of the NI Commissioner for Children & Young People showed that Derry & Strabane has higher than average levels of child poverty, with over 9,000 children here – just under one in five – deemed to be living in poverty based on a UK-wide report compiled last year.

In a detailed presentation, Mairead McCafferty, Chief Executive, and Alex Tennant, Head of Policy & Participation on behalf of the NI Commissioner for Children & Young People, called for a raft of measures to be introduced in the north including the abolition of the two child benefits cap, a new £20 per week per child payment and free school uniforms, as well as a major overhaul of benefits in general to reflect the real cost of living today. Child poverty was defined as those children growing up in households living on 60% of the average income.

“People living in poverty are struggling,” Ms Tennant said. “They’re struggling to meet basic necessities for children, in terms of putting food on the table, heating homes, etc.”

While lone-parent families and workless households are particularly affected, Ms Tennant also highlighted the “shocking” fact that poverty affects ten percent of households with two employed parents.”

She added: “The majority of children with poverty live in households with working parents, so work isn’t lifting people out of poverty. There’s a real issue around low pay and difficult work situations.

“Poverty has a severe and sustained impact on children’s lives. For example, young people on free school meals are more than twice as likely to leave school without five good GCSEs like English and Maths.

“This is quite critical and has a huge impact on their future, so we really are in need of some major initiatives which will take significant resources and political determination.”

NICCY Chief Executive Mairead McCafferty concurred that poverty adversely affected children’s future prospects, as it was “something that impacts their outcomes and life chances.”

Ms McCafferty said: “There’s an almost acceptance [of child poverty] and a problem in trying to eradicate it.

“We have the worst cost of living crisis in 50 years and have to look at welfare mitigations, like abolishing the two-child limit and the benefit cap for social security benefits.”

Ms McCafferty outlined a prospective NICCY anti-poverty strategy, which aims to tackle the issue by increasing family incomes, reducing outgoings, providing childcare, and providing support to vulnerable children and families.

Various elected representatives spoke of the dire situation facing families locally.

Independent Councillor Gary Donnelly said working class people were the ones being hurt here. “There is a school in Creggan that is using portable cabins that are infested, damp, actually hurting people’s health. And these same portable cabins were used to educate those children’s grandparents. There is a school in The Fountain that if it doesn’t get its transport funded, it will be closed in the next possibly three to five years. There is 27 children out of 76 who use transport to go to it.

"There is schoolchildren who have never tasted broccoli and when the schools implement and try to give them nutritious food, they never tasted it before, they don’t know; they don’t have that acquired taste. There is a school in Creggan that has to spend thousands of pounds to deliver a free school meal in January and what they have noticed is that the attendance goes up. For some children it may be the only proper meal they have.”

Colr. Donnelly said there were a lot of people who felt excluded and marginalised in the Council area including people in the PUL and nationalist communities. He added that the Good Friday Agreement was built on a neo-liberal framework and unfortunately ‘that capitalist attitude has been embraced vigorously’, as evidenced, he said, by schools, hospitals and other infrastructure built through private finance initiatives (PFIs) with billions of pounds that has to be paid over 25 years, as well as people embracing cuts such as the bedroom tax. “And just try to get a GP for your sick child. People can’t blame the Brits any more. People lauded ‘get Stormont open, get it open’. It’s open. Let’s see what they do.”

The presentation revealed that child poverty levels have remained at roughly the same level for the past decade, similar to the decade prior to this. It found child health and educational attainment levels were far worse among children growing up in poverty, while infant mortality, suicide, self-harm rates were much higher. The majority of children in poverty are living in homes were at least one adult is working.

People Before Profit Councillor Shaun Harkin said any level of child poverty was “really disgraceful and is really a measure of society to take care of its residents, its citizens and its ability to care for everyone”.

"The fact that we have almost 100,000 children here in the north living in poverty is an absolute disgrace and one which makes me very angry. Here we are in supposedly one of the richest societies on the planet and we have 100,000 living in poverty, and more than 9,000 in our district. It’s infuriating because children don’t get to decide where they are born, what economic bracket they are born into, who their parents are, what community, they are completely vulnerable yet so much of their lives are determined based on what class they are born into.

"This hits Catholic children, Protestant children, children whose families don’t identify with any of the main traditions here, so this is something everybody should be over much concerned about,” he said.

He also pointed to financial bodies reporting huge profits while families struggle to put food on the table.

Colr. Harkin said previous anti-poverty strategies in the north have failed to put a dent in child poverty.

"Poverty doesn’t just happen to children. Poverty is a result of government policy,” he warned.

SDLP Councillor Rory Farrell said this was “a burning issue right across the north” and spoke of the limitations poverty is placing on children in the city and district.

"We like in the UK, it’s in the G7, the sixth richest country in the world and for that to happening is an absolute scandal.

"It’s a symptom of a broken society and I think a key focus for the new Executive should be to address and eradicate child poverty. Government should be there to make life better, to ease the burden.”

Colr. Farrell was also critical of the response to date by the Executive, and said so many things could and should happen that give children a better chance in life. “It’s not just one Minister, it’s every Ministerial department working in tandem to deliver for the most vulnerable people in society.”

Independent Councillor Paul Gallagher said mitigation strategies didn’t address the “root causes” of poverty but only facilitated it, evidenced he said by people seeking help were being directed to foodbanks.

“The median wage in the north west is £130 less than the east,” Colr. Gallagher said.

“The Government has withdrawn free school meals grants to families during holiday time. Let’s tackle that and look at addressing the root causes.”

Sinn Féin Councillor Aisling Hutton said it was hard-hitting to look at the figures. “We have a great opportunity now with Ministers in place, with a government up and running to strike while the iron is hot.

"It is something that all of us in this chamber are very, very passionate about and will try everything in our power to tackle.”

Colr. Hutton said a mulit-agency, multi-sector response was vital, and said that people in crisis accessing services such as foodbanks were being signposted and provided with wrap around care and services, so it was crucial to keep funding those services.

"There’s a lot of areas we need to tackle and it is very important we look at it as a whole.”

She said families were presenting in need of heating, clothing, food but pointed out that those children in those families deserved to be able to go to the cinema at weekends and to be given opportunities to have recreational play and to be children.

DUP Alderman Niree McMorris said that the statistics were startling, and that “the mental health aspect alone is just dire”.

"There is definitely a need for cohesive working with all the departments. Poverty knows no boundaries, it goes across the board on many different facets.”

Ald. McMorris said that unfortunately ‘sticking plaster’ services were needed in the short term, and said longer term comprehensive strategies needed to be developed and implemented.

At the suggestion of Colr. Harkin, the Council is to write to the Secretary of State and Executive Ministers asking for information on what steps are being taken to immediately address child poverty. They also agreed to request a meeting with relevant Ministers and department officials to discuss the above average levels of poverty in Derry & Strabane and to ask what "specific and targeted actions” they plan to take.

Further to this, the Council will also write to the Department for Communities Minister Gordon Lyons requesting an outline on plans to implement actions addressing poverty and inequality, with a focus on addressing child poverty.

Colr. Farrell suggested a slight amendment to request the publication and implementation of the Anti-Poverty Strategy “in the near future”. The amendment also stated that any budget for the strategy should be “ring-fenced”.

“It needs to be backed up with money,” he said.

The full motion with the amendment was carried.

By Brendan McDaid & Andy Balfour, Local Democracy Reporter.