Autumn conference of Early Education 10 November 2017 Child - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Autumn conference of Early Education

10 November 2017

Child poverty and the early years - part of a wider strategy?

Alison Garnham

Chief Executive, Child Poverty Action Group

The importance of the early years

• High quality early childhood education and care

improves child outcomes – EPPE, 2004

• The effects are the most long lasting for the most

disadvantaged children

• Only high quality works – work in progress
• Does this evidence still hold true after the austerity

years?

• What has been happening to child poverty?
• Let’s step back and take a look

Child poverty - trend since the 1960s

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Child poverty is policy responsive

• 1.1m children lifted out of poverty by 2010 – half way to 10%
• Largest reductions in child poverty in OECD between mid-1990s

and 2008 (Bradshaw 2012)

• Child wellbeing improved on 36 out of 48 indicators between

1997 – 2010 (Bradshaw, 2012)

• Deprivation levels fell as did money worries (FACS)
• Extra money led to increased spending on fruit and vegetables,

children’s clothes and books – spending on alcohol and cigarettes fell (Stewart, 2012)

Would have hit target in early 2020s

CONTEXT

• £27 bn a year cuts to

social security

• Over 50 separate cuts to

tax credits & benefits

• Introduction & cuts to

universal credit

• PTA, NLW, childcare do

not compensate

Ending child poverty by 2020?

Reasons why not:

• Child poverty act abolished
• Rising cost of a child – housing and childcare
• Low and stagnating wages, slow to rise
• Benefit and tax credit cuts - £21bn per year, plus £12bn more
• Pensioners protected – yet children more than twice as likely to

be poor than pensioners

• 70% hit families with children
• 60% hit working people

Compared with the EU

SUB TITLE

Today, most poor children live with working parents

In In-wor

• rk po

poverty (20 (2015/1 /16) ) - bel below 60% % me media ian (AHC (AHC) 1997/98 2015/16 % poor children in working households 49 67 % poor children in workless households 51 33

• No. poor children in working

households (million) 2.0 2.7

• No. poor children in workless

households (million) 2.2 1.3

Where the cuts fell

House of Commons Library

More devastating cuts this year

• 4-year fr

freeze - Child benefit, tax credits and universal credit

• 2-chil

ild limit - tax credits or universal credit – from April 2017

• No exception - disabled children or re-partnering
• Ben

Benefit it cap - reduced to £20k a year (£23k in London) - even if can’t work due to disability or need to care for young children

• 94% have children, two-thirds single parents, more than half contain a

child under 5, one-fifth child under 1

• Ha

Hardest t hit hit - single parents, larger families (3+) and disabled children

• Ho

Housing Ben Benefit cut for everyone – for 18-21s - while rents soar

• In

Infla lation now projected to rise by 35% 2010-20

• CB would need to rise by 21% to restore its 2010 value

Universal credit did not escape

• UC did not escape the axe - similar cuts to tax credits reversed
• Reductions to work allowances (point UC starts to be withdrawn) means

parents now need to work a thirteen-or fourteen-month year just to protect current income levels

• Originally UC child poverty reducing - 350k, then 150k, now won’t say
• UC failing its own terms (simplicity, work incentives, reducing poverty)
• Needs to be fixed – restore funding to match original vision
• Other fixes needed – 6 week wait, monthly payment, payment to main

carer, second earner disregard and work allowances

• Now rolling out across UK – making people worse-off

The austerity generation: the impact of a decade of cuts on family incomes and poverty

Published November 2017

PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF THE REPORT

Uses the IPPR tax-benefit model to determine the impact of cuts and changes to benefits on:

• The incomes of families with different characteristics, across the

population.

• Child and working-age poverty.
• Work incentives and rewards from work for single parents and second

earners in couples. Isolates the impact of specific cuts including uprating decisions, work allowance cuts, the two-child limit and the benefit cap. Models the effect of reversing cuts and other changes to universal credit such as a second earner work allowance. Compares different benefit systems at a particular point in time.

FAMILIES WITH MORE CHILDREN LOSE MOST

THE TWO-CHILD RULE WILL PUSH 200,000 INTO POVERTY IN LARGER FAMILIES

Effect of two-child limit on family incomes across the population

• Affected families lose

more: up to £2,870 a year per 3rd or subsequent child.

FAMILIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN LOSE MORE

THE BENEFIT CAP WILL PUSH 100,000 CHILDREN INTO POVERTY

Effect of the benefit cap on family incomes across the population

• Affected families lose

much more.

• CPAG estimates that

single parent families hit by the cap are made worse off by £11,500 a year on average.

UPRATING DECISIONS HAVE A LARGE EFFECT

Effect of uprating decisions in UC on family incomes by decile

THE FREEZE OF CHILDREN’S BENEFITS WILL PUSH 200,000 CHILDREN INTO POVERTY

Effect of the freeze of the UC child element and child benefit

KEY FINDINGS

Families with children lose the most from the cuts. Groups already at higher risk of poverty lose more than others: single parents, larger families, families with young children, families where someone has a disability. Cuts reduce the rewards from work and leave working families worse off. Single parents will see lower returns from moving into work because of work allowance cuts. Cuts to universal credit will push a million more children into poverty than promised and 900,000 into severe poverty. Uprating decisions will push 300,000 more children into poverty and the two-child rule will push 200,000 more children into poverty.

We are facing a child poverty crisis

• HB

HBAI 2015/16:

• ch

child ild poverty has rise risen by 400k sin ince ce 2010

• from 3.6 to 4.0m AHC (2.3 to 2.7m BHC)
• 27% to 30% AHC
• IF

IFS la lates est proje jections:

• Rela

elati tive e ch child ild poverty - 5.1 .1m by 2021/22 (AHC) ) - 36%

• Absolute child poverty ‘14/15-’21/22 - 27.5% to 30.3%
• Rise due to freezes, UC cuts and 2-child policy
• UC work allowance cuts account for 1/3 increase child

poverty in working households

• Most of the increase among ‘large’ families (3+ children)

Did those with the broadest shoulders bear the greatest burden? Are we all in it together? The results are in:

Necessity or choice?

• LSE, Manchester & York universities published this major analysis

http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/spcc/rr04.pdf

• Fig 9 – since 2010, the whole of the poorest half of the income

distribution is worse off and the richest half is better off

• Cuts for low income groups funded tax cuts for richer groups
• Reflects cost of raising the personal tax allowance (£12bn)
• We have seen reverse Robin Hood!

CUTS ARE HIGHLY REGRESSIVE

We’re all in it together?

Why does income matter?

• Family income has a causal relationship with poor child outcomes
• Poorer children have worse:
• Cognitive
• social-behavioural and
• health outcomes
• This is independent of other factors found to be correlated with

child poverty (e.g. household and parental characteristics)

• Most likely mediating factor is parental stress and anxiety

Cooper K & Stewart K (2013) Does money affect children’s outcomes? And update (2017) York: JRF http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/casepaper203.pdf

and https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/does-money-affect-children%E2%80%99s-outcomes

Stealing away children’s life chances

• Education divid

ivide – poorer children 9 months behind (Hirsch D, 2007)

• He

Healt lth divid ivide – socio-economic conditions mean greater risk heart disease, death by stroke, disability, poor mental health (Spencer N, 2008)

• Wellb

ellbein ing divid ivide – neg. impact relationship with parents, educational orientation, self-worth and risky behaviour (Tomlinson and Walker, 2009)

• Cos

Costs ts £29 billio illion a yea ear in public spending (CPAG/Hirsch, D, 2013 building on JRF, 2008 ) – if poverty rises 1m will be £35bn

The cost of child poverty

Rising costs

• Cost of a child to 18 – minimum £155k or £187k (LP)
• £166 per week – more as get older
• Couple both full-time on NLW £60 pw short (LPs £68)
• Housing and childcare costs rising
• Growing poverty gap – on average £60 below line
• Extra costs of food in school holidays can push

families from ‘just about managing’ into hardship

• Parents skip meals
• Issue not just about food – holiday hunger is not an

isolated issue

• Indicators of
• f ris

rising ch child poverty

Effect on families with children

• Housing insecurity - rent shortfalls
• Shelt

elter - by 2019/20 if LHA freeze not undone, 83% of areas in England will be unaffordable to LHA claimants

• Over 1m households in Britain at risk of homelessness by 2020
• Housing condition – affects child health
• Increased homelessness
• Transient populations
• Bedroom tax
• Benefit cap
• Shorthold tenancies
• UC – 6-week delay (causing arrears), payment direct

Effect on families with children

• Or

Orbit HA HA te tenants s - feeling trapped in a cycle of short-term firefighting, endless juggling of money

• Despite parents trying to shield children from direct impact of their

financial situation - many pick up on the stress it causes them and recognise money as their parents’ biggest worry

• Parents were more focused on preventing negative consequences and

less on planning positive outcomes for their children

• There was a feeling of lack of control in shaping their children’s future
• “It’s like being on a hamster wheel, I keep running but I’m not getting

anywhere”

• “I walk 2 miles to save 10p on a loaf of bread”
• “I dread the letter for school trips because you’ll miss a bill so they can

go and then you get charged for missing a bill and it ends up costing a fortune.”

RCP CPCH, Views from the frontline, May 2017

• ‘parents not staying in hospital - financial worries about missing work or

transport costs – couldn’t stay with children or special care baby units’

• ‘overcrowded, damp or unsuitable housing amongst our patients is norm

rather than the exception’, - London paediatrician

• ‘2-year old with recurrent seizures, house with no heating’
• Delays discharge, ‘child needing constant use of electrical equipment in

house with only one socket’, ‘babies unable to be discharged from special care baby units where parents homeless’

• Struggle to afford healthy food – ‘reliance on food banks’, ‘parents

limiting own eating to care for child’ – ‘children worried scared & upset’

• Stress and worry affects parents and children – ‘I think the biggest

impact of poverty on the children and parents I encounter is insecurity, inferiority and stress. Through biological and psychological factors these undoubtedly lead to poor health’

Our work in food banks – tower hamlets

• Failure of benefit system, dearth of good advice
• Users either had no advice referral or not resolved
• CPAG recovered £1,000s unpaid benefits
• One year 2016/17 - £852,289 recovered
• One-off £242,653; weekly £16,390
• ‘For the first time, no stone was left unturned’

So what about the positive effects of ECEC?

Role of early years provision

• Improved outcomes despite all this?
• Children’s home environment is more powerful
• Magical thinking? (Zigler, 2003)
• Sufficient ‘inoculation’ on its own?
• Quality still worse in disadvantaged areas
• Lower take-up
• Need to take quality seriously
• Work with other professionals
• Children’s centres
• Wide-ranging child poverty strategy needed

Child poverty – what needs to happen?

• Need to return to a wider strategy to end child

poverty

• Reinstate targets at national and local level
• End freezes - restore family benefits – triple lock?
• £5 on Child Benefit
• Fix UC – fit for families again
• Reform sanctions regime
• STBAs, DHPs and LWAS – serious need of reform

(guarantee future, ringfence, reporting duties, clear framework as in Scotland)

• Universal Free School Meals work

Ris isin ing publi lic c conce cern:

Ip Ipsos Mor

• ri

i Issu Issues Ind Index, Mar arch 2015

The end - questions?