Tackling child poverty across Wales
Child poverty lies at the heart of problems across the spectrum. It affects people’s mental health, education, physical health and prospects throughout their lives. A Senedd committee is looking into what the Welsh government are doing to fix the issue, and they argue much more has to be done, in order to help young people all across Wales.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 This is not a new problem, nor is it unique to Wales, but we have reached a critical junction
00:07 on this journey. The purpose of our committee inquiry was to critique the Welsh Government's
00:15 draft Child Poverty Strategy, with a view to influencing its final iteration of its
00:22 next 10-year plan to be published by the Government later this month.
00:29 Wales has traditionally had higher levels of child poverty than other areas of the UK,
00:33 but that seems to be easing slightly compared with other regions and countries. Easing the
00:37 problem though, as the committee argue, is certainly not the goal, and they want to see
00:42 the issue fixed. Children living in poverty are significantly more likely to develop additional
00:47 problems as adults and are more likely to continue to live in poverty throughout adulthood,
00:52 creating a vicious cycle.
00:54 In Wales, we still have less child poverty than in six of the nine English regions, after
01:00 housing costs are taken into account. Only Northern Ireland and London have seen a bigger
01:06 reduction in child poverty than Wales. But there is no room for complacency, because
01:12 the consequences are severe. The fact that not only are pupils on free school meals 28%
01:18 less likely to get a good GCSE than pupils who are not eligible, children brought up
01:24 in poverty are four times more likely to develop a mental health problem by the age of 11.
01:30 And adults who grew up in poverty as a child lose out, it is estimated, on £12 billion
01:37 in lost earnings as a result of their likelihood of being unemployed or in low employment.
01:45 Plenty of areas involved in tackling child poverty are the responsibility of the UK Government.
01:53 But at the same time, plenty are under the Senate's competency. Charities and other organisations
01:59 involved want the Welsh Government to look at what they can do to fight this, rather
02:03 than make this an issue of devolved powers and focus on what they can't.
02:07 The NSPCC sums up the frustration expressed by many others by wanting more focus on what
02:14 the Welsh Government can do to address child poverty, rather than a focus on what it cannot
02:20 do. Nobody disputes that many of the policy levers that will have the greatest impact
02:26 in terms of redistributing wealth and reducing inequalities are not in Cardiff, but reserved
02:32 to Westminster. But that does not alter the Committee's deep concern that the draft strategy
02:38 lacks the strategic vision needed to deliver the step change in tackling child poverty
02:44 we want for Welsh children.
02:47 Child poverty is a problem across the country, and across the UK and the world. Tackling
02:51 this issue creates opportunities for those children and for future generations to grow
02:55 and develop. This issue is pivotal to the development of countries, and Wales will need
02:59 to fix this sooner rather than later.
03:01 James P. Watkins, reporting from Wales.
03:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]