To be sad 32% of children near me are in poverty?

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www.nomorekidsinpoverty.uk/ how about you?

How can this be acceptable??

I haven't looked at the link and suspect it's an English based one. In Wales we use the Welsh index of multiple deprivation where poverty is based on a weighted number of factors. These include education (school attendance, key stage attainment, GCSEs 5 or above, adults with qualifications etc), health (life expectancy, life limiting illnesses etc), benefits, employment status, transport, housing, environment....
Poverty is a very complex issue but sadly the long term impact is that poverty is expensive, and that unless we do something the cycle will continue to repeat itself.

Agree Alfie - the problem is really complex and throwing more money at families who are chaotic, bad with household management and can't cook doesn't solve it.

I was a school governor in one of the most deprived areas of the UK. Huge problems with parents with addictions, truancy, kids not being fed (I used to fundraise to pay for their breakfast club so it was free) neglect, abuse etc. then there was a big influx of asylum seekers in the area and despite having a number of new languages to contend with and all the attendant communication issues, school performance went up significantly. These were aspirational people who valued education and wanted to make the most of the opportunity.

Poverty has many dimensions.

19.7% here in North Shropshire.
Any is too many in modern Britain.

That's a nice sentiment but according to the criteria there will always be some.

They offer free breakfasts because some of those children on FSM will come from chaotic families where breakfast is rarely given. It is simply more effective and cheaper to offer them to everyone on FSM, rather than assess and invite those who come from families who would not give their children breakfast.

If you are on a lower income you are usually surrounded by people in similar circumstances so it doesn't feel as bad as rich people think it does.

My Mum also grew up in poverty. Some days without food. Hiding from the rent man. No shoes for school. Never any new clothes - ever. Cold. Not enough money for the doctor - consequent health problems for her and all her siblings - the death of one of them at 3yrs old. No bathroom, one outside shared loo. Never her own room, (shared a bed until she was a teen). No option to stay on at school. Never, ever a holiday, (her first holiday was her honeymoon). Hard work.

That's what I call real poverty.
But I'm sure someone will come along and minimize it, purely because it happened years ago.

Mistigris yes - I made my post having read the entire report (that's why I mentioned I was paraphrasing): they explain about the median, but my point was that they say this gives a false data set, over-estimating non-working poverty, and under-estimating working poverty. They then say they correct for this.

However, it doesn't say how these corrections were obtained, or how they were made - this is why it's misleading. If such and such a study has identified that working poverty is under-identified by 5.2%, say, by the median method, then this should have been cited, and an explanation given that, as a result, the figures for working poverty had been increased by 5.2%. Without this information, the report is statistically meaningless, and the methodology is flawed as a result - that's why I said it would not be publishable in an academic journal, and why a student would fail if they submitted this. Data needs to be checkable/verifable, and the methodological process by which it is obtained needs to be transparent, correct/appropriate and also identifiable.

Alfie/Hermione - yes poverty is far more multi dimensional than the statistical analysis presented in the original link purports to show.

In my town which in some areas is a post industrial wasteland but in other areas very affluent the dimensions of poverty are very family specific.

A few years go I noticed a boy and girl in our local library during school hours. I was worried about them and asked the library staff who they were. The staff knew them as regulars. They essentially lived in the library but never went to school. Both quiet and withdrawn children just sat staring at the computer screens. Their mother a poorly educated alcoholic lived nearby in actually a quite nice local authority or housing association house but with constant chaos of different men, arguments, furniture in the garden. I lived round the corner in a flat and used to see the mother fairly often in the betting shop, cash for you type shops, 24 hour convenience stores, take away pizza shop or hanging about on the street. She was clearly someone who needed far more help than more benefits.

The poverty of those childrens' lives was far more than about money.

It's not about minimising it violet, but it IS about saying that fewer people had central heating etc then and so the poverty was still relative to what others had.

These days very few homes are without adequate heating for example so it IS different.

Relative poverty still exists as there are still vast differences in life outcomes between those born in relative poverty and those who are not.

I am considered to be in poverty but I don't think I am as I have had a good education and well paid jobs. Someone with the same income as me who hadn't had the advantages I have had wouldn't possibly cope as well as I can and their children may suffer as a result.

Its not minimizing it Violet Far from it. Its asking why ppl seem to want it dragged back down to that level again before they can call it poverty.

If anything its todays poorer families whose experiences are being minimized. As evidenced yet again on here.

Alfie several landlords are leaving tenants for months without heating and hot water when it needs fixing so it does happen today. The plumbing and heating contracters employed by some of these landlords are happy with the status quo because they can make several calls to a tenant making different excuses to drag out a job.

So poorer people are being used to make money for others. And these heating companies with these contracts know damn well they have left families with young children/elderly tenants to freeze. But ...more callouts = more money.

The logical outcome of reproductive freedom is some fraction of children in poverty. It's sad but inevitable.

I can relate to that Helena, there's an old thread from around 2007 under my previous name where the landlord had not fixed the heating. The fact that it was freezing made no difference to him. It was an annual event and I used to go to bed at 7pm with DS so that he stayed warm. That was possibly the only time I felt myself "in poverty" despite the fact we both worked and earned good money.

Yes I can understand that happens. I was more thinking in general of how most houses now have heat (which should be working) as opposed to the 70s when I grew up where few houses had the luxury of central heating.

It's not the same now and violet cannot make an accurate comparison as the goalposts with relative poverty change as society makes progress.

YY Alfie. I was born in the 70s and we had central heating growing up but i had friends that didnt.

If you're really concerned.. Try to make it better. Don't just complain That is all..

my friend has lived in the same house rented for 14yrs

she has 2 storage heaters,thats it,its freezing and miserable

she's all electric and when the weather gets cold her electric can be £40-50 a week and its still freezing cold

she has given up asking the landlord to fix things as they never get done (i have offerred to take her to Shelter for advice)and she is worried if she complains about the lack of maintenance he will turf her out as she pays £850 a month but with money spent on it could get £1100 a month

so she's stuck in housing poverty thats for sure

£850 month for a freezing cold house? Jesus wept.

i know were in the south where a 3bed semi rent for approx £1050-1150

a 2bed flat is £750- 800

if she lives there for the next few years she or HB would of paid for his whole house

and there nothing special