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Figures showing a 200,000 rise in UK children living in relative poverty last year have been described as a "moral disgrace" by Barnardo's. The children's charity said ministers were a long way from honouring a pledge to halve child poverty by 2010.
In 2005-6 3.8m children were in poverty - in homes on less than 60% of average income including housing costs.
But Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton said "considerable progress" had been made in ending child poverty.
That was yesterday's headline on the BBC's News at 10. Although I have questions about Barnardo's conclusions (the key word being "relative"), it is worth remembering the title of a recent ippr press release:
Child poverty causes disability and disability causes child poverty.
The ippr's work was commissioned by the organisation I work for, the Disability Rights Commission (drc), as part of an overall look at how disability is integral to many of the public policy challenges facing politicians and society: in essence, if you address disability, you achieve a much "greater good". Child poverty is an excellent example of this way of thinking: the drc has found that:
Disabled children and the children of disabled parents are at significantly higher risk than other children of growing up in poverty.
One in three children living in poverty has a disabled parent (264,000 being a lone parent)
Over half of all families with disabled children live in or at the margins of poverty.
Clearly, then, by addressing issues associated with disability — and I don’t mean providing ramps for disabled people to get into buildings, because that is only the very small tip of a very big iceberg — policy can address other, key issues (such as child poverty and participation, a subject considered at arbitrary constant before) as well.
For more information on the Disability Agenda and the other key areas of public policy it considers, see here: The Disability Agenda: creating an alternative future.
Tags — Society