Child poverty is overwhelming teachers & GPs!

Useless parenting is what sends kids to school hungry most of the time.

And what has made these parents "useless"? Where have things gone so wrong that some young adults struggle to provide proper parenting?

Could they themselves be the children of parents whose livelihoods were wiped out with the closure of our major industries? Could they perhaps be the product of an education system that has failed them by making them feel like rejects with nothing to offer if they are not academic?

When the last Labour government tried to do something about this in the form of Sure Start it was knocked on the head by the Tories with their unnecessary funding cuts. It is no good complaining that something is not right, then abolishing an attempt to make it right.

People are people - we are all flawed in one way or another; we all have or have had disadvantages - but some of us have the education or solid background to overcome these - bleating that people are not perfect and telling them what they "should" do gets us nowhere. Understanding people and taking our weaknesses into account in making policy gives some hope of moving on to better things.

Have we got to the point that the Victorians moved on from? Are we back to the deserving and the undeserving poor? And in punishing the undeserving poor are we happy to see the children bear the brunt of this? - to perpetuate the cycle?

It feels like going back to Victorian times valdali- the "undeserving poor" as lesser human beings.

Luckygirl, didn't see your post.

That's OK Willow3 - great minds and all that!

Well said, Luckygirl.

Spot on luckygirl

Luckygirl3: excellent post.

Well said Luckygirl3. There but for the grace of god go I.

That's an excellent post Luckygirl3

I think the figure is particularly high because teachers are now asked to record every little sign of poverty as part of Child Ptotection. So if a child often has a dirty shirt you record it, if a child has unbrushed hair, you record it, if a child says repeatedly they are hungry, then you record it. So naturally the figures increase.

Luckygirl3 So true - an excellent post beautifully explained.

This is a complex problem. First of all, why do people have children if they can't afford to look after them properly? Businesses should pay decent wages instead of relying on foreign workers.
The education system needs to concentrate on developing each child's skills and prepare them for work. At the moment, one size fits all doesn't work. Every child has different talents and these should be encouraged.
In the past, we had mills, factories and coal mines. There was no shortage of work. Now, thanks to greedy business owners who chose to move their factories to foreign countries, less unskilled work is available.

I currently work in early years I am afraid as is usual with these issues it is much more complex than the rowntree trust has presented. Complex situations such as the current situation in schools can rarely be reduced to one cause. I am quite tired of complex issues being presented in this way (I dont necessarily blame the Rowntre Trust for that, that is their specific focus) but it doesnt help any of the children in those situations.

Germanshepherdsmum

I don’t think it is as black and white as that . There are too many other things to take into account , the high cost of rents , mortgages and generally keeping a roof over your head .
But feeding your child should always be a No 1 priority.

Germanshepherdsmum
Absent Fathers are a scourge on society in my mind .
These Men also often have several children with different Women never contributing a penny !
Within my own Family my Surrogate GS has an absentee father , who miraculously reappeared once GS turned 18 and was no longer in education !

In the pit villages of the North West, of Cheshire and Yorkshire, Cumberland, the North East, North and South Wales, the Midlands and Kent there were communities who had a sense of place, a sense of pride, who worked ferociously hard in the pits but who were reasonably well paid and spread their wealth over many, many thriving local businesses.
There was continuity within families, many sons and daughters proudly following their forebears into the coal industry.
They were hard working but good times, people from these communities had disposable income, hunger was a thing of the past when the pit bosses creamed off the vast profits of that back breaking work. If there were a feckless few idlers and benefit scroungers who couldn't/wouldn't feed their children the slack was very often taken up by the community at large.

These communities, that pride, that prosperity, that whole way of life no longer exist. Now in those vanished villages & beyond, there's despair, grinding poverty, hopelessness and the humilation of going, with not a penny in your pocket, to kind strangers to provide the absolute basic necessity of life.
I wonder what happened?

I wonder what happened

Thatcher and thatcher politics

Sadly all true, Luckygirl

Luckygirl3

Very well said .

The mantra to my family has always been “ Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes’

Indeed Whitewavemark2 she left a legacy of utterly tragic destruction and paved the way for the scandalous child hunger of today. But, as always, it's blame the descendants of those whose lives changed overnight.

Whitewavemark2

*I wonder what happened*

Thatcher and thatcher politics

The explosion of drugs and guns brought into the country started in the 80s.
We were living onboard in a remote boat yard in Essex in the 80s. We would have visits from customs officers asking if we’d seen anything unusual/ dodgy.
In the 90s we took a year out to sail through France to the Med, we were asked by someone if we wanted a gun.

Primrose53

Most social workers and teachers vote Labour. They are always cracking on about child poverty and how bad the Government is.

Social workers know the system inside out. I know a husband and wife both qualified social workers and they both retired in their 50s on health grounds due to “stress” which is of course very difficult for anybody to prove otherwise. I also know a nurse who claimed she injured her back at work and she took several years off to bring up her small children while claiming to be too ill to work. She said loads of nurses do that, again, because it is not easy to prove otherwise.

I see little evidence of real child poverty.

Well, Primrose, you need to get out more! What a terrible slur on both teachers and social workers!

Do you live in a busy inner city or very large town? My daughter works as Primary School teacher in a very deprived area of Essex and I can assure you there is relative poverty in her school.

Just because we don’t haven’t the same kind of poverty in the UK as Africa and India, doesn’t mean child poverty doesn’t exist!

Child poverty certainly does exist, but the figure is more around 30% than the nearly 50% quoted.

Luckygirl3

*Useless parenting is what sends kids to school hungry most of the time.*

And what has made these parents "useless"? Where have things gone so wrong that some young adults struggle to provide proper parenting?

Could they themselves be the children of parents whose livelihoods were wiped out with the closure of our major industries? Could they perhaps be the product of an education system that has failed them by making them feel like rejects with nothing to offer if they are not academic?

When the last Labour government tried to do something about this in the form of Sure Start it was knocked on the head by the Tories with their unnecessary funding cuts. It is no good complaining that something is not right, then abolishing an attempt to make it right.

People are people - we are all flawed in one way or another; we all have or have had disadvantages - but some of us have the education or solid background to overcome these - bleating that people are not perfect and telling them what they "should" do gets us nowhere. Understanding people and taking our weaknesses into account in making policy gives some hope of moving on to better things.

Have we got to the point that the Victorians moved on from? Are we back to the deserving and the undeserving poor? And in punishing the undeserving poor are we happy to see the children bear the brunt of this? - to perpetuate the cycle?

It would appear we are back to the “undeserving poor”
“The great unwashed”

Great response 👏👏👏👏

Btw, in my daughter’s (deprived area) school they do NOT register every dirty shirt or y brushed hair, if they did they’d have no time to teach. They record accidents, instances of children fighting and where the child themself says or acts in a “worrying way” The child would have to quite dirty or bruised or say Mum/Dad/Uncle etc hits them. Don’t downplay safeguarding!

Joseann

Child poverty certainly does exist, but the figure is more around 30% than the nearly 50% quoted.

This figure us accepted is it? 30%, 50%, both estimates are far too high, we are NOT a third world country! We have children (& adults) suffering from mal-nutrition, and we have children attending independent schools costing ££££££ per year! The gap between rich and poor is widening by the day. For every service cut a family somewhere will suffer hardship. I don’t think this is acceptable.