The child poverty gap between North East and the rest of the country has reached a 20-year high, a hard-hitting new report says.
Research by the North East Child Poverty Commission highlights a “growing chasm” between the Government’s declarations on levelling up and the reality of rising child poverty in the North East. The study comes just a few months after a national report found that child poverty had risen steadily in the North East over the last seven years and last year went against a national trend to become the highest in the country.
In some areas of the region, more than half of children are growing up in poverty, causing problems in education, health and wellbeing. The new report highlights a number of causes for the growing poverty rates, including a steeper increase of in-work poverty in the North East, as well as high numbers of parents who are unable to work because of disabilities, childcare costs or other factors.
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Campaigners are now calling on the Government to use this week’s ‘fiscal event’ to introduce measures that will ease poverty levels, which are widely expected to have risen further in the last year due to the reversal of the pandemic rise in Universal Credit and the increase in the cost-of-living.
Report author and North East Child Poverty Commission director Amanda Bailey, said: “Given the mountain of evidence on the immediate and lifelong impacts that experiencing poverty in childhood can have – particularly during the earliest years – it’s deeply concerning that the child poverty gap between the North East and the UK is now at a 20-year high.
“It’s also clear that Government policy decisions are not only resulting in significant and avoidable levels of hardship for families across our region, they are also exacerbating many of the inequalities the levelling up agenda seeks to tackle, with local charities and community groups increasingly left to pick up the pieces. It’s not right that the basic needs of thousands of North East families, in and out of work, are now being met in this way.
“It’s vital that the Government takes further, urgent action to help families in our region keep their heads above water in the coming months.”
The report points out that the rise in North East child poverty - which had fallen between 2000 and 2013 - began around 2014, well before Covid-19 and the cost of living crisis. It says that “child poverty in the North East is not inevitable” and argues that many families in the North East have been disproportionately impacted by changes to the social security system over the last decade.
The Commission has called on the Government to undertake ‘levelling up assessments’ on major policy and spending decisions, to invest more in family hubs and to end the two-child benefits limit criticised by the Bishop of Durham and other campaigners.
Reacting to the report, Northumbria police and crime commissioner Kim McGuinness said: “There are some kids who fight through the hardship and go onto achieve great things but there are others who can’t. It’s these kids that often end up vulnerable and it’s these kids that can be taken advantage of by criminals.
“Sometimes the consequences of the early hardship and struggles follow a child into adulthood and can lead to them making bad decisions. Government needs to recognise it’s the start you have in life that impacts how you grow up - poverty impacts children, life chances and the whole community and I can’t help but feel the North East is a community being ignored on this. It’s about time the right help was there for those who have it the toughest.”
Newcastle North MP Catherine McKinnell is also urging the Government to tackle child poverty, saying: “Under successive Conservative governments, we have seen rates of child poverty increasing. This is a scandal, and I am extremely concerned that it will get worse as the cost of living crisis deepens and inflation soars. Growing up in poverty impacts health, wellbeing, education, and future earnings. Tackling this must be a priority for the new Prime Minister.”
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