Northern Ireland needs an Anti-Poverty Strategy now
Across the UK, Barnardo’s is supporting children who are slipping into poverty as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. Families who once had to choose between heating or eating are now worried about providing warm beds for their children or losing their homes altogether.
In Northern Ireland, an Anti-Poverty Strategy is urgently needed to tackle financial hardship.
By Trása Canavan, Barnardo's Senior Policy & Public Affairs Lead (Northern Ireland)
What do you think about when you hear the word poverty? What image comes into focus in your mind? Is it an image of another country in the world, like the ones we’ve seen on TV? Or is this image of a child, sitting in a school in Northern Ireland, pretending to eat their lunch out of an empty lunch box?
Although some areas in Northern Ireland rank among the poorest in the UK, many people don’t recognise that poverty is a reality for thousands, right here on our doorstep. The cost-of-living crisis has shone a spotlight on the desperate challenges that a growing number of children, families, and communities are facing. The constant worry of paying the next electricity bill and putting food on the table isn’t a new experience for many families.
One in four of our children in Northern Ireland grows up in poverty. Alarmingly, the figure has stayed at this level for the past two decades.
The cost-of-living crisis is shining a spotlight on those challenges families have faced for decades. However, this crisis will never end for some children unless we take real and meaningful action.
We need an Anti-Poverty Strategy for Northern Ireland now. While poverty has been woven into the fabric of our society, we have the power and the resources to unpick that. We have the ability to reshape our society so that communities and families are supported, and no child goes to sleep cold and hungry.
In September 2022, members of the Anti-Poverty Strategy Co-Design Group (Barnardo's NI is a member) released their recommendations for an Anti-Poverty Strategy.
The recommendations are ambitious and far-reaching, covering the whole life cycle and adopting a place-based and service-focused lens. The paper proposes a vision of “an equal society where poverty and its impacts are eradicated, and that respects, protects, promotes and fulfils the rights of those at risk of poverty to ensure they achieve their aspirations”.
One of the key new actions in the recommendations is a Child Payment for Northern Ireland, adapting a model that has already proved successful in Scotland to the Northern Ireland context to support the children and families that need it most. Such a payment would lift 27,000 children out of poverty – this would be an unprecedented reduction in the number of children living in poverty in Northern Ireland. This action, alongside the others set out under six outcomes, would reshape how we tackle poverty on a structural level. This change is not only achievable, but necessary and urgent.
No one disagrees that action on poverty is desperately needed; indeed, no political party disagrees with the need to protect our children, families, and communities from the devastating impact of poverty. However, we need our Assembly to step up and deliver for Northern Ireland now. We cannot deliver real, meaningful change without a government. The time for words of concern and support has passed. Now is the time for action.