Poverty in the UK – Save the Children launches first domestic appeal

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Save the Children is best known for its work with starving children in Africa or Asia, but this time, the international aid charity is turning its attention to the UK – the world’s sixth richest country.   

The charity is launching “It Shouldn’t Happen Here”,  its first-ever domestic appeal to help children across the UK have hot meals, adequate shoes, winter clothes and other necessities they cannot afford because their parents have been hit hard by budget cuts and the recession.

The charity is hoping to raise £500,000  - a modest goal compared to its international humanitarian appeals – but its symbolic impact is huge. It shows the failure of the coalition government to tackle mounting poverty and inequality in the UK.

 "It is shocking to think that in the UK in 2012, families are being forced to miss out on essentials like food or take on crippling debts just to meet everyday living costs,” says Chris Wellings, Save the Children's UK head of policy.  "Poverty in the UK is different to some of the poorer countries in the world. It is more nuanced and poses different problems. But it does not mean that we cannot stand up for children's rights in the UK."

According to a survey of 5,000 UK adults commissioned by Save the Children:

• Nearly two thirds of parents in poverty (61%) say they have cut back on food and over a quarter (26%) say they have skipped meals in the past year.

• One in five parents in poverty says they cannot afford to replace their children's worn-out shoes, while 80% of parents in poverty say they have had to borrow money to pay for food and clothes over the past 12 months.

• Some 44% of families in poverty say that "every week they are short of money", while 29% say they have "nothing left to cut back on".

Not surprisingly, financial worries are taking a toll on parents’ physical and mental well-being, triggering arguments and other signs of family stress, the survey indicates. 

Save the Children is calling on the government to stick to its 2020 child poverty targets, to encourage more employers to give the current living wage of £7.20 to  £8.30 an hour, provide extra childcare support for low-income parents and allow parents to keep more of their earnings before benefits are withdrawn. 

The charity's Shouldn't Happen Here report is the second high-profile study by an international aid charity to focus on domestic poverty in recent months. Oxfam's Perfect Storm, published in June, said that cuts and rising living costs were threatening to return the UK to levels of inequality not seen since Victorian times.

Investing on children's future

Children’s early years are crucial and that is the time when governments should strongly support them. Investing more money on children in the first six years of their lives would reduce social inequality and help all children, especially the most vulnerable, have happier lives, according to the OECD’s first-ever report on child well-being in its 30 member countries.

The report shows that average public spending by OECD countries up to age six accounts for only a quarter of all child spending. But a better balance of spending between the “Dora the Explorer” years of early childhood and the teenage “Facebook” years would help improve the health, education and well-being of all children in the long term, according to Doing Better for Children.

“The crisis is putting pressure on public budgets across the world. But any short-term savings on spending on children’s education and health would have major long-term costs for society,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Spending early, when the foundations for a child’s future are laid, is key especially for disadvantaged children and can help them break out of a family cycle of poverty and social exclusion."

The report is advocating providing more cash benefits in the pre-school years, strengthening pre- and post-natal services and early childhood education, especially to children in disadvantaged families, supporting breast-feeding and teaching parents the importance of a healthy diet and the risks of smoking.

Many countries concentrate child spending in compulsory education. But often, school systems are not designed to address the problems of disadvantaged children. More of this money should be spent on helping them within schools, through mentoring and out-of-school programmes, to improve behaviour and educational attainment.