We’ve just passed the milestone of 100 days since the Assembly returned. There has been mountains of analysis on this, and much of it seems to arrive at a similar conclusion: not a great deal has been achieved so far. It would be dispiriting but, on the other hand, what else is new?
Since 1998 we’ve had sporadic government, and when the stars align and good people work hard, it can deliver good things. But most of the time it’s dysfunctional.
Quite often, we operate without a coherent programme for government, and budgets are rarely long-term. Some problems seem to be completely beyond its capacity to solve. Or maybe its not about capacity, because quite often it seems to be about a lack of willingness to even try.
Child poverty – and poverty in general – is one of the worst of these problems. It was bad in 1998. It is still bad now. For lone parents, 93% of which are women, it’s worst of all.
Poverty links with several other issues that the Executive has so far failed to tackle over the years. Childcare for example – for how does a single person afford the exorbitant cost of childcare on their own? And so, the problems build upon each other, the solutions further and further out of reach.
Or are they? There are other places in the world that have faced the same problems, and some of them have found measures that work. In the last few years, a group of experts were commissioned to find solutions that would work here. These recommendations are awaiting implementation, though – so we’re back to square one.
In the news this week, we heard of a woman made homeless when her landlord sold her home. We heard of her children’s upset at being moved frequently, the uncertainty impacting their mental health. She described feeling like she “failed her children”.
This story is not rare; tens of thousands are homeless. The Housing Executive are paying enormous amounts to place people in temporary, often unsuitable accommodation, which does nothing to solve the root cause of the problem.
Others are housed, but facing increasing uncertainty – can they afford to pay their rent as rents spiral, and so does the cost of everything else?
In research carried out by the Women’s Regional Consortium last year, hundreds of women told of the impact of the cost of living on them and on their families. Some of the testimonies in the research are crushing to read.
One woman described the struggle to escape: “It feels like we’re living in a vicious cycle. We can’t better ourselves at all – we can’t get out of it.” Another speaks of lacking even the most basic comforts: “I’ve had to sit in a cold apartment which is causing damp. I’ve had to wash in cold water and go without food.”
Another counts the impact on her mental health: “Anxiety, sleeplessness, stress, panic attacks. Due to constantly having the thought in your head about the next meal and worrying if the gas or electric is going to run out.”
This is the nub of it: we know that child poverty is the most insidious kind of problem because it is not just a short, tough period – it will follow those children throughout their lives. It limits the chances that they will ever escape poverty’s maw. It will live like a dormant virus in their mind, impacting their confidence and their mental health. All of this will cost society and the public purse infinitely more than it will cost in the short term.
There are other places in the world that have faced the same problems, and some of them have found measures that work
I know this because I grew up in those kinds of circumstances myself. In those days, there were ladders out. It was feasible for parents to encourage their children to go to university and get a good job as a route out of living hand-to-mouth, because not only did degrees carry more promise, but university itself was free. Now the ladders have been pulled away.
Even the prospect of a Labour government offers cold comfort; they too have abandoned the promise of the welfare state and will not even remove the two-child cap on benefits – a policy that would single-handedly lift around half a million households out of poverty across the UK.
There are solutions to this problem, and we do not need to chase our tails. Many of the problems that persist the longest feed each other, and we need to grasp the nettle at the root and invest in children.