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Britain has a "hidden army" of school-age carers
- some as young as five - who have been forced into adult-style
roles looking after family members, a report has revealed.
It claims there are at least 175,000 young carers, of whom
one in five regularly misses school or suffers educational
difficulties because of the huge responsibilities and demands
on their time.
The report, Young Carers, has been produced by The Education
Network (Ten), a policy and research organisation that supports
local education authorities, with input from the Children's
Society and the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. It claims
that its figure of 175,000 young carers - based on official
census data - is likely to be an underestimate, because many
families will not admit the situation for fear of being reported,
and because of the stigma attached.
The report reveals that half of all young carers provide
help for 10 hours or less every week, a third for 11 to 20
hours a week and 16% for more than 20 hours a week. Some 2%
are caring for more than 50 hours a week.
Martin Rogers, coordinator of Ten, said, "This is an
important issue for schools and local education authorities.
Our report highlights a neglected issue that should be at
the heart of the children's agenda across the social care
and education sectors. The cause of raising the educational
attainment and improving the life chances of a significant
proportion of Britain's children requires this issue to emerge
from the shadows."
(Guardian, 13 April 2005)
It looks "more likely than not" that the Government
will miss one of its key child poverty targets, the Institute
of Fiscal Studies has said. Its assessment came as the latest
income figures from the Department for Work and Pensions showed
that just 100,000 extra children were taken out of poverty
in 2003-4, taking the total since 1998 to 700,000 - a much
smaller fall than most analysts expected. This leaves between
300,000 and 500,000 more children to be lifted out of poverty
in just one year if the goal of reducing child poverty by
a quarter - or by slightly more than 1m children - is to be
achieved on time.
Work and pensions ministers were quick to point out some
quirks in the 2005 data and the administrative fiasco in April
2003 when the child tax credit was introduced. The Treasury's
insistence that the introduction of the tax credit went ahead
as scheduled left too little time to test new software fully.
This led to system crashes that left thousands of families
without payments at the time their income was being measured
for the survey. There had been no repeat of the payment delays
and a further £3.50 a week increase in April 2004 in
child tax credit meant that Labour remained "broadly
on track" to hit the target, said Alan Johnson, the work
and pensions secretary.
Jonathan Shaw, a researcher at the Institute for Fiscal Studies,
said, "The Government will have been disappointed by
the latest child poverty figures, which do not show the big
drop that we and they were expecting." There were, he
said, questions over the data as the family resources survey
on which they were based reported a rise in the number of
children living in workless households when other surveys
reported a fall. This might account for 80,000 to 90,000 more
children being shown in poverty than was the case. A similar
number would have been taken out of poverty if tax credits
had been paid on time, Mr Shaw said.
Even allowing for this and other changes, it now looked as
though the Government would get close to its 2004-5 target
on poverty measured before housing costs, but was "more
likely than not" to miss when income was measured after
housing costs. It would also be "extremely challenging"
to hit the next stage - a halving of child poverty by 2010.
The IFS has calculated that an extra £2bn a year will
need to go into tax credits and benefits by 2007-8 to set
that on track. However, the chancellor's announcements to
date will increase such spending by only £600m by then.
(FT, 31 March 2005)
Millions of pounds worth of government money has failed to
stop a new generation of teenagers from the poorest homes
leaving school with nothing to show for 11 years of compulsory
schooling.
A report obtained by the Independent shows that Britain's
most deprived boroughs are still failing to make inroads into
the number of youngsters quitting with no GCSE passes. Indeed,
the 35 education authorities considered the poorest are making
the least progress of all 350 UK authorities in reducing the
figures. That then has a knock-on effect for school-leavers'
employment prospects. They can spend a lifetime struggling
to find a job, it argues.
Many of the 35 boroughs have made little progress at all.
In fact, in four of the 10 most deprived areas, the number
has increased over a four-year period.
The report was commissioned from the London School of Economics
by the Prince's Trust - Prince Charles' inner-city charity.
The figures show the number of youngsters quitting with no
GCSE passes in Knowsley, Merseyside - the most disadvantaged
borough in the table - had grown in the four years from 1999
to 2003. It had gone up by 53 from 11.1% to 11.3%.
The other three boroughs to suffer a similar fate are: *
Manchester, up by 915 from 5% to 7.5%.
* Nottingham up 60 to 6.8%.
* Kingston-upon-Hull up 138 to 7.1%.
Overall, the percentage in the 35 boroughs has fallen by
0.6% compared to 2% nationally.
The lack of progress comes despite millions being pumped
into these areas to improve standards. The Excellence in Cities
programme has spent at least £800m over four years on
providing mentors for struggling pupils and master-classes
for the brightest pupils trapped in deprived communities.
However, the report shows few of the 35 authorities have
managed to pull themselves out of the bottom 10% in that period.
Twenty-nine of the top 35 most deprived areas in 2004 were
also in the top 35 in 2000. The report says: "The groups
at risk of social exclusion and some of the communities in
which they live have not benefited [from improvements in living
standards, health and general prosperity] as much as others.
"As a result, they have fallen behind the rest of the
population.Improvements in the educational outcomes in many
'hardest to reach' areas are still below the national average."
The report is blunt about the job prospects for the unqualified:
"Forty-four per cent of men who leave school with no
qualifications fail to acquire any qualification later in
life," it says.
"Men with no qualifications have a 68% employment rate
compared with a 75% rate for those with a basic level-one
vocational qualification [the lowest form of qualification].
Very few people who leave school without qualifications are
afforded the opportunity to get very far, or indeed anywhere,
on this vocational ladder."
(Independent, 21 March 2005)
Millions of low-income families with young children were given
further tax credits and benefits in the Chancellor's Budget.
He claimed that "every family in Britain will be better
off" as a result of his policies. Gordon Brown has announced
that will be using £1bn to raise the child tax credit
by 13% over the next three years, in line with earnings. A middle-income
family on annual earnings of £23,400 will be £260
a year better off under the changes. The increases will mean
that three million of Britain's seven million families with
children will now receive more in tax credits and child benefits
than they pay in income tax, the Chancellor said.
The Government has set a target of halving child poverty by
2010 and eliminating it by 2020. But a spokesman for the Save
the Children charity said: "The children of unpaid carers,
the ill, disabled people and others who cannot work will miss
out - again. The Labour government, since coming to power in
1997, has concentrated its child poverty strategy on welfare
to work, increasing rewards for work and helping more people
into work. This has been successful in reducing child poverty
but has left those in severe and persistent poverty further
behind."
(Independent, 17 March 2005)
On 14 July 1999, a private seminar was held at 11 Downing Street.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown met with child poverty
specialists to discuss measures to improve conditions for children.
A third of the 12 million children in Britain are in poverty.
There is a vicious circle of poor children doing badly at school,
leaving early and being unable to get a job.
The seminar emphasised that two in five children are born poor
and that the arrival of a child causes poverty in many families.
A million children will have been taken out of poverty in Labour's
first three years (defined as being over the official EU poverty
line - half of national average income.) However, sceptics point
out that these children were the borderline cases and therefore
the easiest to help. The remaining three million will be harder
to help without huge redistribution of resources. It is also
doubtful whether a bit of cash will significantly alter children's
chances.
The government's measures include:
- the working families tax credit (WFTC), which came into
force in October 1999 and is designed to ensure low income
families do not lose out by working
- an increase in child benefit
- the minimum wage
- the new deal for lone parents.
The Education Maintenance Allowance provides up to £40
per week for teenagers to encourage the poorest to stay at
school. The working families tax credit means that families
drawing £62 in family credit will draw an extra £24
under WFTC. Increases in income support and child benefit
took a child in an unemployed family from £28 a week
when Labour came to power to £40 in 2000.
Labour plans to exterminate poverty through education and
training for everyone, from newborn babies upwards. Sure
Start is the centrepiece of this long-term planning, involving
health visitors, social workers, nurseries and playgroups
with drop-in centres for parents. Sure Start covers 175,000
children around the country and its three-year plan includes
cutting low birth weights by 5%, 90% of children achieving
normal speech and language development by the age of 18 months
and 10% fewer children appearing on the at-risk register.
Sure Start is based on the American programme Head Start,
a project offering two years of pre-school help to children
and their families, which resulted in a huge increase in children
who grew up to have jobs, own homes, take college courses,
and never commit crime.
(The Guardian 14 July 1999 and 21 July 1999)
The Government's anti-poverty programme is having only a patchy
impact on long-term inequalities, especially among racial minorities,
according to research published by thre Social Exclusion Unit
in March 2004. Despite millions spent on reducing poverty, the
research shows that there are areas where people are 23 times
more likely to be unemployed or economically inactive than elsewhere
in Britain.
In an implicit acknowledgement that much remains to be done,
Gordon Brown, the chancellor, is to vet cabinet ministers' three-year
spending plans to check they meet the Government's goals on
social exclusion and equality. Departments will be asked to
show how their programmes tackle poverty, problems of social
mobility and generational inequality.
The interim stocktaking report by the Social Exclusion Unit
hails significant progress but states: "Life chances for
those born into poverty continue to be far worse than those
from privileged backgrounds and high concentrations of worklessness
remain in some areas." It adds that "53% of lone parents
are in work, and 17% of pensioners and 16% of children are in
persistent low-income households".
Owning up to the difficulty of helping the most disadvantaged,
the report says: "The groups who seem to benefit least
from policies also seem to be those who suffer persistent disadvantage,
for example some ethnic minority groups and those with poor
skills." 70% of ethnic minority citizens in the UK live
in the 88 most deprived local authority wards in the country,
compared with 40% of the general population.
It suggests some of the exclusion issues are likely to intensify
and change due to the increasing premium on skills, the ageing
population with growing associated care needs, greater ethnic
diversity and a growing proportion of single-person households.
(Guardian, 21 March 2004)
The Government is poised to achieve its target of reducing
child poverty by a quarter between 1999 and 2004, but the
chancellor will need to find fresh policies to meet his goal
of halving it by 2010, a Commons select committee said in
April 2004.
The Labour-controlled work and pensions select committee
said 3.6 million children were still living in poverty and
nearly half were outside the deprived areas where Government
support is concentrated. It warned that achieving the 2010
target would be much more challenging because it would involve
helping the most disadvantaged families, not just the slightly
poor.
In a plea to Gordon Brown to make more resources available
in the forthcoming public spending review, it said meeting
the 2010 target required giving an extra £10 a week
per child to the poorest families.
More affordable childcare would also have to be made available
to allow unemployed parents to have access to a living wage.
(Guardian 8 April 2004)
Devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has had a
positive impact on children's services in these countries, according
to a report published by the charity NCH in July 2003.
The report, United for children, which analyses how devolution
has affected children's policy in the UK since its introduction
in 1999, says it is an opportunity to bring policymaking closer
to children, young people, families and communities and make
it more effective. "If good communication can be developed,
devolution will help us all to learn from each other across
national boundaries," it says.
The report describes the approach taken by Wales, the first
country in the UK to appoint a children's commissioner, as "one
of the most notable features of the evolving chlidren's policy
landscape in the UK". Caroline Abrahams, NCH policy director,
said: "What's interesting is that Wales has had far less
power devolved to it, but seems to have embraced the role more
avidly."
The report says Northern Ireland seemed most closely allied
to Wales, particularly in its emphasis on promoting children's
rights and participation, but has been hindered by the suspension
of the National Assembly since autumn 2002.
However, the Scottish Parliament, which has a different legal
system and is able to pass primary legislation, is criticised
for not making enough use of its powers to implement social
and economic change. After devolution, Scotland placed an emphasis
on investing in education rather than social care, the report
says, and social work departments are "a very weak threatened
force".
England's approach to policy, the report says, is "one
of incoherence, reflecting the different views and interests
that jostle for dominance within Westminster". This "results
in policy for children and young people being very mixed, with
some parts much better than others".
(Nursery World, 17 July 2003)
The first steps in a major reform of children's services in
England began in July 2003 with the announcement of the creation
of 35 children's trusts.
Margaret Hodge, the Children's Minister, said that the new trusts
would unite children's social, education and health services
in a single local structure. The reforms, produced in response
to the Victoria Climbie child abuse inquiry, aim to break down
professional rivalries and improve communication.
The 35 trusts vary in size and scope, with some focusing on
particularly vulnerable children, such as the disabled, and
some uniting services for all children. Many will involve charities
and other independent agencies.
Each trust will be given up to £100,000 a year for three
years to get established. They will be required to involve children
and families in designing their services. Further reforms are
expected in September 2003 in the Green Paper on children at
risk.
(Times, 11 July 2003)
The chancellor's flagship childcare policy amounts to a "drop
in the ocean" that is failing to help enough of Britain's poor
families, the trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt,
conceded in December 2002.
Ms Hewitt said her department and the Treasury were to investigate
why the childcare tax credit, which helps relatively low-income
working parents pay nursery or childminding costs, has not fulfilled
Government hopes. The tax break, introduced in 1999, was "not
having the transforming impact that we thought it would have
and it should have," she said.
The Government is to examine why the credit was not reaching
more families and would "look at enlarging its scope", she said.
Figures obtained by the Labour MP Karen Buck reveal that the
total number of families in England receiving the tax credit
in May 2002 was just 138,836 - only 2-3% of all families with
children up to the age of 16.
Under a shake-up of in-work benefits in April 2003, the Government
is set to replace the childcare tax credit - and the working
families tax credit of which it forms a part - with a new child
tax credit.
(Guardian, 19 December 2002)
The Government failed to meet its targets for reducing poverty
in its first term and will fail again in the second term if
it does not alter its policies, according to academic estimates
published in December 2002 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Three studies of low-income households have shown that Labour
halted the rise in poverty that had occurred under the Conservatives.
In 2000/1, the year before the last election, there were 13
million people in homes with income below the official poverty
line. This was one million fewer than in 1996/7, the last year
of the last Tory government, but almost double the number 20
years ago.
Of 50 key indicators of poverty and social inclusion, 24 improved
over the past five years and only six deteriorated. Improvements
include reductions in unemployment, educational underachievement
and inadequate housing.
But, in line with the Government's preferred definition of poverty
- households with income less than 60% of the national average,
labour went into the last election with 3.9 million children
living in poverty.
This went only half way towards Labour's goal of reducing the
number of children below the poverty line by one million in
its first term.
A study by David Piachaud, of the London School of Economics,
and Holly Sutherland, of Cambridge University, forecast that
the number of children living in poverty would fall by 750,000
between 1996/7 and 2003/4. This is well short of the Government's
target of a 1.2 million reduction by 2004.
Professor Piachaud said: "There are no cheap and easy ways of
reducing poverty. To keep the numbers falling, they have to
give priority to this area of policy."
A paper by Guy Palmer and colleagues at the New Policy Institute
found that the minimum wage and tax credits for the poorest
households were not helping the long-term sick, disabled and
others unable to find work. "The need to tackle low pay remains
pressing, given that almost half of all children in homes below
the Government's poverty threshold include at least one adult
who had paid work."
The Child Poverty Action Group's director, Martin Barnes, said:
"At least an extra £3 billion a year will need to be spent
to achieve the manifesto commitment to lift a further one million
children out of poverty by 2005."
(Guardian, 12 December 2002)
Half the Government's projects to help people in deprived areas
are to be scrapped or merged in a stark admission that five
years of 'initiativitis' have resulted in confusion and red
tape. Barbara Roche, social exclusion minister, said 28 schemes
would be axed, and their budgets added to those of similar schemes.
Initiatives to be axed are:
- Health Action Zones - launched
in 1997 by Alan Milburn, then health minister, who said
they would be "the trail-blazer for a new approach to more
integrated care for patients". They are to be reintegrated
back into the mainstream health system.
- Community Chests - local
grants announced by Tony Blair in 1997. These will be merged
with the Community Empowerment Fund and the Community Champions
Fund.
- Home Zones, another of the
prime minister's pet projects, to reduce traffic speeds
in poor residential areas, are being scrapped altogether.
- The Street Wardens initiative
will be merged with the Neighbourhood Wardens initiative.
- Education Action Zones
will become part of Excellence in Cities.
- Three regeneration programmes
- the New Deal for Communities, Neighbourhood Management
and Business Brokers - are to be merged into one.
- Three employment initiatives
- Action Teams for Jobs, the Ethnic Minority Outreach Service
and Employment Zones - are being scrapped.
- Three separate anti-crime programmes
- Communities Against Drugs, Safer Communities and Small
Retailers in Deprived Areas - will be consumed into a common
funding pot.In a bid to prevent a further outbreak of 'initiativitis'
a team of officials will be asked to act as gatekeepers
and ensure new projects are actually needed.
Ms Roche said that, as ministers, "you want to make your
mark, you want a new initiative, you want something to announce".
But she said the proliferation of initiatives had "created
some confusion on the ground" and given local authorities
and charities too much form filling to do. She said there
would be a "radical cut in the number of funding streams"
and more focus on integrating narrow projects into mainstream
provision.
An official from the office of the Deputy Prime Minister said:
"There has been a lot of criticism that area-based initiatives
are not co-ordinated. A lot of them have similar aims and
objectives and cover the same area." She added, that while
some have had good results, "if you have too many of them
it leads to inefficiency".
(Financial Times, 17 October 2002)
The Child Poverty Action Group said the Blair Government's performance
was "dire for poor children" from 1997 to 1999. But "substantial
progress" had been made since, because the number of children
living in poverty fell from a peak of 4.5 million.
The report Child Poverty: an end in sight? defined poverty
as the condition of households with income less than half the
national average after housing costs. It said Britain had one
of the highest rates of child poverty among industrialised countries,
the level increasing more than in almost any nation between
the 1980s and the mid-1990s.
(Independent, 27 February 2001)
Reaching Out: the role of central Government at regional
and local level is a report by the Performance and Innovation
Unit. This report says that time and money are being wasted
by fragmentation and duplication of effort. Some authorities
have had to make more than 40 applications for grants to numerous
Whitehall departments.
The report points out that, "Central Government initiatives
which affect the same people in local areas are run separately
and not linked together. This reduces their effectiveness,
not least in the poorest neighbourhoods and imposes unnecessary
management burdens on local organisations."
The report proposes the following solution: "Strengthened
and higher profile Government Offices are needed in the regions
covering all Government policies affecting local areas, with
more discretion on how to achieve results - but more clearly
accountable for delivery of cross-cutting outcomes."
Lord Falconer, the cabinet office minister, will be given
a new role as "Zone Tsar" responsible for integrating the
different regional initiatives.
(Telegraph 16 February 2000)
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