Child Poverty and Social Mobility Strategies

The government unveiled it’s new child poverty strategy this week. A New Approach to Child Poverty: Tackling the Causes of Disadvantage and Transforming Families’ Lives, outlines plans for ending child poverty by 2020. At the heart of the strategy are various reforms to the welfare system. It is hoped that by moving all working age benefit claimants onto a universal credit some 600,000 adults and 350,000 children will be lifted out of poverty.

The strategy also intends to use early intervention methods to improve the life chances of children. In particular there will be an expanded network of health visitors, an emphasis on relationship education and other initiatives such as the families with multiple problems campaign. The government will also introduce a pupil premium designed to increase children’s aspirations in life.

As a supplement to these proposals there will also be a new strategy for social mobility entitled Opening Doors: Breaking Barriers. This is designed to increase opportunities for people from poorer backgrounds and help them to achieve a better standard of living. It will seek to do this in part by removing the culture of informal internships gained through personal or family connections within Whitehall and asking the private sector to do the same.

The government’s progress in achieving the aims set out in these strategies will be assessed by a new statutory body – the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. For the first time there will be a set of indicators against which social mobility can be measured. There will also be measures for child development, school attainment and infant health as well as an indicator for severe poverty.

These new strategies make for interesting reading in the current climate of spending cuts. As has been pointed out by Dr Katherine Rake, chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute, there are significant problems surrounding flexible working opportunities, and access to quality, affordable childcare for those on low incomes.

It’s also interesting to note that despite recognising that the early years of a child’s life are integral to their future success and acknowledging the success of the Surestart programmes in supporting families with young children, the reality is that funding to Surestart centres is being cut by many local authorities. In fact, a group of parents travelled to Downing Street last week to deliver a petition with 50,000 names protesting such cuts. Other measures such as cutting funding for the library service and enabling universities to charge £9000 a year in tuition fees are likely to have a negative impact on social mobility.

Peter