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Who decides what destitution is ?
How does the Rowntree trust collect those statistics? , Having worked in the community as a paediatric nurse for a long time , destitution has many interpretations
It was explained in the original link.
People are destitute if
EITHER:
(a) they have lacked two or more of the following six essentials over the past month, because they
cannot afford them:
• shelter (they have slept rough for one or more nights)
• food (they have had fewer than two meals a day for two or more days)
• heating their home (they have been unable to heat their home for five or more days)
• lighting their home (they have been unable to light their home for five or more days)
• clothing and footwear (appropriate for weather)
• basic toiletries (such as soap, shampoo, toothpaste and a toothbrush).
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To check that the reason for going without these essential items was that they could not afford them,
we: asked respondents if this was the reason; checked that their income was below the standard
relative poverty line (that is, 60% of median income ‘after housing costs’ [AHC] for the relevant
household size); and checked that they had no or negligible savings.
OR:
(b) their income is so extremely low that they are unable to purchase these essentials for themselves.
We set the relevant weekly ‘extremely low income’ thresholds by averaging: the actual spend on these
essentials of the poorest 10% of the population; 80% of the JRF ‘Minimum Income Standard’ costs for
equivalent items; and the amount that the general public thought was required for a relevant-sized
household to avoid destitution. The resulting weekly amounts (AHC) were £95 for a single adult living
alone, £125 for a lone parent with one child, £145 for a couple with no children and £205 for a couple
with two children. We also checked that households had insufficient savings to make up for the income
shortfall.
In essence, this consensus-based definition of destitution seeks to capture people who cannot afford what
they need to meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed.
With regard to the definition’s primary ‘material deprivation’ criterion ((a) in Box 1), the six essential items
specified, the need to have lacked two or more of them and the relevant duration of lack for each specific
item were all endorsed by clear majorities of the general public in the omnibus survey we undertook as part
of the original study (Fitzpatrick et al, 2015).
The secondary (alternative) ‘extremely low income’ criterion ((b) in Box 1), also endorsed by the public in the
omnibus survey, is not intended to provide a new ‘poverty’ line. Rather, it indicates an income level below
which people cannot meet their core material needs for basic physiological functioning from their own
resources. This criterion was introduced because the omnibus survey established that a majority of the public
took the view that people who were only able to meet the most basic living needs with help from charities,
for example, should be considered destitute.
Quantitative research
As in the first three studies in our series on destitution, the development of core national estimates of
destitution involved a number of interconnected steps (for further detail, see the Technical Report: Bramley
and Fitzpatrick, 2023b; also Bramley and Fitzpatrick, 2023a):
• a survey of users of a representative sample of crisis services in 18 UK localities, selected to ensure an
appropriate range of expected incidence of destitution, urban/rural attributes and size/type of migrant
populations (see further below)
• estimating the total number of users of relevant crisis services across all 18 case study areas, and how
many were destitute, over the course of a week, as well as providing a profile of their characteristics and
experiences
• reviewing a wide range of existing statistical datasets in order to generate indicators of groups and
factors associated with high risks of destitution, covering every local authority in Great Britain (GB)2
• comparing our survey-based estimates for the 17 GB3 localities with predicted rates of destitution based
on the secondary indicators, and calibrating the latter indicators for consistency with the average survey
findings
• using information within the survey about repeated use of the particular services sampled, as well as use
of other relevant services, over the previous year, to generate estimates of the total number of unique
destitute service users over the course of 2022
