In 1999, the government set a target of eradicating child poverty within a generation and of halving child poverty by 2010. Progress has been made and (according to a government report ‘Ending child poverty: everybody’s business’) 600,000 children have been taken out of relative poverty, and absolute poverty has fallen by 1.8 million to less than half the 1998-99 level. But many children still live in poverty and this is unacceptable.
Income and earnings inequalities are still higher in Britain compared with most industrialised countries and compared with 30 years ago and Labour has not managed to reverse the work of the Thatcher government which deliberately shifted resources to the better-off.
The statistics are shocking enough, but looking at the concrete effects on people’s lives really brings the message home.
Undernourished Children
A London doctor, Dr Sam Everington in Bromley-by-Bow, finds that a lot of the children he treats suffer similar malnutrition to what he saw in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Many are underweight. “They are undernourished and failing to thrive so they sit in lessons unable to concentrate, which affects their education.” (Evening Standard, 3 March 2010)
He sees children with bloated stomachs just like in African conditions. “Parents say ‘my kids won’t eat anything’ but they’re surviving on crisps. It’s about helping the parents to understand what healthy food is.”
He regularly sees cases of TB and vitamin deficiencies. “I see children with poor growth and weak teeth because of a lack of vitamin D.”
Mile End Road is known as “chicken shop mile” because of the cheap takeaways. Child obesity is high because of poor diet and poverty. Some four-year-olds are dangerously fat, while nearly a quarter of 10 to 11-year-olds in Tower Hamlets are obese.
At least half his 17,000 patients are living in poverty. A third have mental health problems triggered partly by poor living conditions. Many of the children suffer from sleep deprivation, low energy and muscle aches. Infant mortality is 50 per cent above the national average.
Unemployment (nearly three times the national average) is the biggest cause of health problems. When the doctor told one man “I think you need a social worker”, the man said: “No. I need a social worker’s wage”.
Public Concern
In a series of articles entitled ‘The Dispossessed,’ the Evening Standard documented what it was like for poor people living in London.
Readers expressed anger and outrage at the hidden deprivation that is the lot of nearly half the capital’s children. The switchboard was jammed and practical help flowed in.
But private charitable efforts will never be enough to solve these problems. It requires a socialist planned economy where people’s needs come before profits.
Social Needs
In another item from the Evening Standard, David Cohen reports on a 22 year-old student called Rachel, who had suffered as a child in a home where her father beat her mother and had been taken into care aged 12. As a result of this mental problems surfaced later and she was hospitalised.
Rachel had already beaten the odds as one of only 6% of children who grew up in care making it to college; she was one of the stars of her year, on target for a first in her English degree at university.
But she became depressed and suicidal and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depression) and ordered to stay in hospital for seven weeks.
“The link between her mental illness and childhood trauma — itself highly correlated to poverty — is well documented. According to a 2005 report in the British Journal of Psychiatry, half of bipolar disorder patients have experienced “severe childhood abuse.” (Evening Standard, 3 March 2010)
She managed to finish the degree but has since been in and out of hospital and mostly too ill to work and so has to survive on benefits of £70 a week (£3,640 a year), well below the official poverty line for a single person of £5,980.
After paying rent she is left with £45 a week which she spends as follows: £25 on groceries from Lidl, £5 on utilities, £5 on her mobile phone, and £5 to pay off the Barclaycard debt, now down to £1,500, racked up at university.
Rachel is passionately critical of the lack of resources for children in care. She believes that her condition could have been diagnosed and treated much sooner: “But social services glossed over my mood swings and failed to give me the medical and therapeutic support I needed because to do so would have cost them time and money.
“The sad reality is that looked-after children are bottom of the pile and that care is often no respite from dysfunctional families. I blame the Government for failing to provide adequate training or resources. You would’ve thought that a Labour government would have improved things, but they haven’t. It’s no wonder that a quarter of criminals were once in care and that so many end up homeless.”
As for David Cameron, “He keeps talking about ‘broken Britain’, but I think it was the Tories who broke Britain, and Labour that haven’t fixed it.”
The only government that can deal effectively with such problems is a Labour government committed to socialist policies.
We need to fight for:
- A minimum wage you can live on
- A job for all
- A mass programme of public housebuilding
- Free access to further and higher education
- Properly funded social care services
