Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Getting real on child poverty
The new Welsh Children's Commissioner this morning, echoed views expressed on this blog, and questioned whether the target to cut child poverty in half by 2010 can be achieved. He went further by describing the target as a "red herring" and "unrealistic". He said that the UK and Welsh governments should explain now how they planned to end child poverty by 2020.
In many ways Keith Towler has highlighted the main weakness of the target culture that has overwhelmed government since 1997. Targets are set far into the future so as to give the impression that Ministers are doing something, without inviting too much scrutiny, and then they are quiety forgotten about until it is too late.
In this case the fight against child poverty in Wales is stalling because of a lack of joined up and long term thinking by Labour’s Westminster and Welsh Governments. There are still around 140,000 children in Wales living in poverty and recent figures show that the numbers are increasing. If you take into account the costs of housing, the Government will miss its child poverty targets by a wide margin.
The Child Poverty Strategy has helped the easiest-to-reach families through the tax credit and benefit system but there is an emerging hardcore of parents who are far harder to help, especially lone parents, disabled parents and some ethnic minority families.
Getting parents into sustainable employment is a very important part of the solution. But jobs need to be secure and long term because parents going in and out of work can cause more damage to the child. We need to target more education funding at pupils from underprivileged backgrounds and improve the provision of quality childcare in the most deprived areas in Wales.
In the longer-term, the Government needs to look at how to support better those who simply cannot work, as well as a more flexible and tailored approach to other parents, if it is to live up to its pledge to eradicate child poverty. It also needs to put its money where its mouth is and reform the benefits system so as remove the disincentives that currently exist to stop some parents going back to work.
In many ways Keith Towler has highlighted the main weakness of the target culture that has overwhelmed government since 1997. Targets are set far into the future so as to give the impression that Ministers are doing something, without inviting too much scrutiny, and then they are quiety forgotten about until it is too late.
In this case the fight against child poverty in Wales is stalling because of a lack of joined up and long term thinking by Labour’s Westminster and Welsh Governments. There are still around 140,000 children in Wales living in poverty and recent figures show that the numbers are increasing. If you take into account the costs of housing, the Government will miss its child poverty targets by a wide margin.
The Child Poverty Strategy has helped the easiest-to-reach families through the tax credit and benefit system but there is an emerging hardcore of parents who are far harder to help, especially lone parents, disabled parents and some ethnic minority families.
Getting parents into sustainable employment is a very important part of the solution. But jobs need to be secure and long term because parents going in and out of work can cause more damage to the child. We need to target more education funding at pupils from underprivileged backgrounds and improve the provision of quality childcare in the most deprived areas in Wales.
In the longer-term, the Government needs to look at how to support better those who simply cannot work, as well as a more flexible and tailored approach to other parents, if it is to live up to its pledge to eradicate child poverty. It also needs to put its money where its mouth is and reform the benefits system so as remove the disincentives that currently exist to stop some parents going back to work.
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Targets are set far into the future so as to give the impression that Ministers are doing something, without inviting too much scrutiny, and then they are quiety forgotten about until it is too late.
This very post is evidence to the contrary.
This very post is evidence to the contrary.
If New Labour are true to form they'll probably decide to make the poor swear allegiance to the queen in order to get their benefits.
Actualy, maybe I shouldn't have put that notion in to the public domain ... ?
Actualy, maybe I shouldn't have put that notion in to the public domain ... ?
# posted by 
: 10:21 PM
: 10:21 PM
My point Normal Mouth is that the long term target effectively deferred effective scrutiny with the result that Government did not focus on achieving their aim until it was too late.
Do you think that one of the problems is that the targets set for very far in the future are used by the Government as an announcement to the effect that the problem has been solved - a bit like the tractor production targets in the Soviet Union?
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