Tag Archives: Child Poverty

Strule ‘Shared’ Campus a backward step

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Few things could be more outrageous, damaging and at the same time indicative of the divisive state of Northern Ireland society, than the announcement that the Strule ‘Shared’ Education Campus in Omagh is to go ahead.

Hailed by all the major parties in the Assembly as “a pioneering project that will provide a state-of-the-art shared centre of learning”, it is in fact no such thing. It is just another, expensive,  con trick to sustain the illusion that children here are being educated together. They are not. ‘Shared’ is not Integrated.

The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 committed to” facilitate and encourage integrated education…”  Since then, both Sinn Fein and the DUP have been instrumental in sidelining the progression of integrated education and have connived to set back the integrated education project through disingenuous schemes such as their ‘shared education’ ploy.

‘Shared’ education is not Integrated education. It was never meant to be. Instead, it is a deliberate and reprehensible dodge which confirms, consolidates  and copper-fastens divisions in our society at the expense of the integrated education of yet another generation of children.

No progress on Poverty

While attending sporting events, swapping football shirts and presenting ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden with bowls of shamrock were dominating the news headlines, a grimmer reality was, once again, passing under reported.

A new report into child poverty has found that it is directly affecting around one in five children here – something the Workers Party and this website has regularly highlighted.

Child poverty is not simply a case of lack of food and resources it also has a life-long impact on children’s development, socialisation and opportunities.

Children who grow up in poverty are more likely to experience health inequalities, have lower levels of educational attainment and are more likely to experience poverty as adults.

Children in deprived areas are expected to live 11 to 15 fewer years in good health than their more well-off peers, and children receiving free school meals are twice as likely to leave school with no GCSEs.

Eight years ago, the Assembly adopted a Child Poverty Strategy but the Northern Ireland Audit office has found  “a lack of significant progress on the main child poverty  indicators”.

Tackling child poverty must be made a pressing political priority to alleviate the suffering, deprivation and stolen opportunities.

Only a class-based socialist society can deliver for working class people. As we engage in the immediate and necessary battles, we must always remain focussed on that objective .

Hunting with dogs: cruel, barbaric and unnecessary

Northern Ireland  remains the only part of the UK where hunting animals with dogs is permitted.

Three years ago, a bill to ban the practice was debated in the Assembly but was defeated when Sinn Fein and the DUP both voted against it.

Now the  League Against Cruel Sports and the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (USPCA) have launched a petition on hunting animals for sport to be made illegal.

Recent opinion polling shows that around 80% of those questioned were in favour of such a ban.

Hunting and killing wild animals with dogs is barbaric. It is cruel and unnecessary for the animals as well as for the dogs that are forced to kill them.

You can sign the petition by following the link below:

https://takeaction.league.org.uk/page/144213/petition/1

World Mental Health Day: 10 October 2023

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This year’s World Mental Health Day, quite rightly, claims good  mental health as a universal human right.

One in five adults, and one in eight young people, in Northern Ireland experience mental health or emotional problems.

Support programmes, further research and policy initiatives are all important in the battle against mental ill health but tackling its root causes must take priority.

One of those root causes is poverty. It is responsible for high levels of stress due to struggling to make ends meet, overcrowded or unsafe housing and relatively poor physical health.

Lower qualifications and poorer health

More than 100,000 children here are living in poverty. Children in poverty are twice as likely to leave school with little or no qualifications. They are also more likely to suffer poor mental health and have fewer years of good physical health.

People with poor mental health have life expectation reduced by at least ten years. The disadvantages caused by poverty start before birth and grow more acute  throughout a lifetime.

Research by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has established a firm connection between mental health and poverty. The Rowntree Trust has identified a clear connection between poverty and a number of mental health problems including schizophrenia, depression and anxiety, and substance misuse.  

Other studies have highlighted negative effects on mental health caused by unemployment, low pay, insecure part time work and the lack of affordable and accessible child care.

Confronting the root causes of mental ill health, and thereby ensuring that mental health becomes a universal human right, means challenging and changing the capitalist economic system which causes, perpetuates and profits from poverty.

Poverty- from the cradle to the grave

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Research paper after research paper and report after report continues to confirm what we already know – that almost 25% of children here are living in poverty.

The most recent research by the ‘Save the Children’ organisation shows an increasing number of those children come from homes where at least one parent is working and provides mounting evidence that the current benefits system is making matters worse rather than better.

The level of support available to parents and children is inadequate, inflexible, unnecessarily complicated and removed form the realities of family life.

It is not just about improving the current system – important as that is – but about providing secure, well-paid employment, providing training  and apprenticeships, ending the use of zero hours contracts and providing affordable, accessible and flexible child care.

All of the main local parties are happy to talk and tut about it but only a socialist society can address and eradicate poverty at all levels.

Child Poverty Swept Under the Carpet

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Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t know that the Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network has recently produced a report highlighting child poverty. It didn’t dominate the news headlines.

The BBC made passing reference to it well down its website, A well-known Belfast weekly paper reported that ‘Child poverty rates in North and West Belfast ‘remain high’.  A ‘Fact Checker’ website concluded that ‘Northern Ireland’s rate of child poverty is quite low’ and not one newspaper carried an editorial comment on it.

There was no righteous indignation, no outrage and no levelling of blame or culpability. This was yet another report, swept under the carpet that challenges the official narrative that, despite the faltering peace process, all will be well when the Assembly is back up and running.

For the record, the report found that across Northern Ireland 22% of children are living in poverty but that figure masks the realities of areas like West Belfast 28.5%, North Belfast 27.6%% and Newry & Armagh at 26.3%.

The report also found that almost 63% of all children in Northern Ireland experiencing poverty live in households where at least one adult is working.

Poverty exists, not because we live in the UK or because we don’t live in a united Ireland. It exists, and will continue to exist, because we live under an economic system that produces, perpetuates and profits from poverty.

Capitalism is about production and profit. It is relentless in its pursuit of both. If 20% to 30% of children live in poverty as a consequence, then so be it.

Statistics alone don’t begin to tell the full story. Lives are shortened, opportunities are lost, ambitions never realised and physical and mental health impacted by the relentless grind that is the life of every man, woman and child condemned to live in poverty.

Poverty is created and sustained by an economic system that recognises the benefits of keeping wages and expectations low. It is managed by governments in Westminster, Belfast and Dublin that feign concern and simulate activity but do nothing to eradicate the underlying causes.

The direct link between poverty and the prevailing economic system is demonstrated by a look at just five policies which would greatly reduce levels of poverty, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland, but which run contrary to capitalist economics:

  • Create well paid secure employment.
  • Introduce a minimum living wage
  • Provide training and support for women re-entering the workforce and for working mothers 
  • Re-structure and radically improve the benefits system 
  • Guarantee quality, affordable public housing: 

Of course, only a socialist society can deliver even these minimum requirements. Capitalism pursues unregulated profit at all costs. People, including children, become commodities to be bought and sold for the minimum price and the maximum return.

Time to Reclaim Our Resources – Crossan

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“As the dependency on foodbanks, even for people with jobs, continues to rise, as child poverty rates exceed 25% and three people die on the streets of Belfast, homeless without hope, heat or shelter, the Shell oil and gas company recorded annual profits of £32 billion – the highest in its 115-year history”, Patrick Crossan of the Workers Party has said.

“Shell will not be paying any tax in the UK this year courtesy of a loop hole that allows them to offset the costs incurred by investment and development. But they will be paying out more to their shareholders than they will be investing in renewable energies: oil and gas becomes smoke and mirrors”, Patrick said

A merry dance

“In media circles, this obscene, unjustified and unjustifiable profiteering at the expense of working people was a one-day-wonder: in some cases, not even that.

“It’s been said that the job of the media is to distract working people from reality. It fulfils that role well but it also protects multi-national corporations and their operations from public inquiry. The results of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ get more media scrutiny than corporate robbery and grand larceny”, Patrick commented.

“Energy and other utility providers don’t operate as a public service. They exist to make and maximise profits”, he said.

“The solution to the cost of utilities crisis is not in vote catching gestures like ‘windfall taxes’ but in bringing utilities like gas, electricity, broadband services and fuel into public ownership and control.

Ownership

“The increased poverty, deprivation and mounting mental health pressures caused by the current cost of living crisis is being fuelled by the astronomical price hikes in gas, electricity, oil and petrol. At the root of the problems lie the private ownership of the natural resources and their distribution and delivery chains” stated Patrick

“We work for our public services. We use them. We pay for them. We must own them” he concluded

A Food Bank Free Future

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Applauding the services provided by local foodbanks, Workers Party representative Nicola Grant said,

“There can be absolutely no doubt that emergency food parcels, provided by volunteer organisations in the Newry and Armagh area, continue to serve as a lifeline for many local families and children”.

“Figures provided by one of the largest local networks continue to show a significantly increasing need year after year: a 25% increase last year and an increase of almost 200% since 2018. There is also a marked increase in the number of families in rural areas depending on food bank support and as many as one in five people in employment having to rely on food banks to help feed their families”, Nicola said.

“No-one, regardless of their circumstances, should be forced to go hungry.” Nicola said. “Twenty six percent of children in the Newry and Mourne area are believed to be growing up in poverty – many from working families. We have also seen how many NHS staff are now relying on local foodbanks because they simply cannot make ends meet”.

“Food banks are a life line for many”, Nicola said, “but we must build a society where they are no longer needed, a society in which working people and their families are valued, rewarded and supported”

“Thousands of working people have been forced into taking industrial action in recent months in defence of jobs, services, safe levels of provision and decent pay. While they stood on the streets, energy companies and transnational conglomerates raked up obscene levels of profits and paid out billions  of pounds to their executives and to their shareholders.”, said Nicola

“Food banks could be made unnecessary, almost overnight, with a major reform of the benefits system and if working people received the wages they needed to support themselves and their families.”

“The money is there. Currently, it is just in the wrong hands”, concluded Nicola

Poverty: early years and life-long legacies

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Poverty is most often described as having low or no income, a lack of food, shelter or heat. However, looking at poverty and its effects through childcare provision and early years education is less common.

The availability and cost of childcare are key factors in the struggle against poverty. High quality and accessible early education and early years support can play a significant role in combatting the effects of poverty for children and families. Research and practice have shown that by supporting children’s development can significantly improve their educational outcomes.

Affordable, accessible and flexible childcare provision is vital if parents are to be supported in securing employment or in accessing education and training.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where parents are not offered 30 hours of free childcare. Yet another failure by a Stormont Executive more concerned with pursuing their self-interests than addressing poverty.

The first five years of any child’s life are amongst the most formative. During this period a child’s brain develops more rapidly, than at any other time in their life. The quality of a child’s experiences in the first few years of life – positive or negative – helps shape how their brain develops. These experiences have a lasting impact on their health and ability to learn and succeed in school and in life.

Children born into and living in poverty are at an immediate and lasting disadvantage; one that will stay with them and affect them for the rest of their lives.

Germany, France, Finland and Sweden all provide varying forms of free early years / pre-school education. In Northern Ireland parents can access two-and-a-half hours of free pre-school education a day, well short of the rest of the UK and nothing like the availability of some other European countries. To make matters worse, the scheme only operates in term time.

It is totally inadequate for the pre-school needs of the children and woefully insufficient for the needs of working parents, even those in part time employment.

The creation of a comprehensive social system for pre-school age children, preparing children for school and life, was one of the major achievements of the socialist countries. 

Poverty blights the lives and denies the opportunities for thousands of local children, parents and families. Failure to address the importance of children’s early years and provide all the necessary support condemns generation after generation of working-class families to a life time of misery, underachievement, mental illness and lack of self-worth.