Today is my 49th day doing the clothes off my back challenge. If you're a regular reader of the blog you'll remember that it all started with a conversation about capsule wardrobes and child poverty (you can read about it here), and has turned into me following these rules for 49 days so far, and a full year by the time I'm done.
I've been thinking about child poverty even more than usual over the last week for one good and one not so good reason which I'll share with you.
As is traditional I'll start with the bad news....
Our government has decided to change the way child poverty is measured. And (in my personal opinion) they've got this wrong.
Our current measure says that a child whose family are living on 60% less than the national average income are living in poverty. Now as a measure it's a bit of a blunt stick as individual families will move above and below that line based on national income without their ability to pay their rent changing one iota. But it does acknowledge that you measure poverty by money.
The government will now measuring the impact & the causes of poverty (impact - attainment of children, causes - families being out of work) - this isn't a bad idea BUT without maintaining an income measure there is a risk that this will shift the debate from poverty to education and back to work programmes. Crucial work to be sure but I don't care how well your teacher/ mentor has prepped you for that exam/ interview, you are not going to perform your best if you enter the room starving hungry.
In my borough (Walthamstow) End Child Poverty estimate that 34% of children are living in poverty. To put it another way 10 children in the average classroom round here are living in families where they struggle to make ends meet. Not struggle to buy designer trainers, a new xbox or holidays. But to heat their homes in winter and keep everyone in the home fed and sheltered. This makes me angry. I spent years of my life doing direct work with families in areas of Sheffield and London where poverty is a real issue. I've worked with children who despite their parents best efforts are inadequately dressed for the weather, come to school bone cold because their house has no heating, or indeed hungry. And much as the rhetoric from our more right wing media would have you believe that this is because their parents are feckless and lazy - my experience is very different.
Lots of the families I've known who live in poverty have one or both parents in work (63% of children living in poverty nationally are in a working household), lots of them have children whose care needs are higher than the usual and most of them have cut out the luxuries for themselves before they reluctantly decided that their son or daughters winter coat would need to wait for the next paycheck. These are families like yours, made up of people like you and difference between what they need to spend to keep their heads above water and what they have coming is stark.
Income matters and I'm really worried that we've stopped measuring it.You can read more about why it is important here.
The GOOD NEWS of the week is also about income. Specifically it's about the rights of families of children in hospital to continue to get DLA. You'll remember I've talked about the brilliant Mathieson family before in my post about Dowser Day.
Contact A Family have been campaigning with the Mathieson family against the rule that meant DLA payments stopped when their son Cameron was in hospital for more than 84 days.
On Wednesday the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that this was a violation of his human rights. This is the first time ever that the Supreme Court has found for a claimant in a social security case, and it will be transformational for all those whose children face extended hospital stays.
I'm not ashamed to say that there were tears and whoops in the Contact A Family offices as this verdict came through - it is brilliant, brilliant news.
It's made it easy to keep plodding on with the clothes of my back challenge this week. I know in the scheme of things that the challenge is a small thing - but the money raised helps Contact A Family to do the big, the exciting, the life changing things.
And with 41% of families of disabled children telling us they've had to take a loan out to pay for food, there is still a lot of work to be done. Thankyou for your support - as always if you want to Support Contact a Family's work you can do so here.
And here for all you rule checkers are day 47 & 48's #clothesoffmyback photos. No effort at all made to pose in these sorry!
