The News Line: News (SOURCE)Friday, 20 April 20121.2m HUNGRY CHILDREN!More than half of all school children living in poverty, 1.2 million, are missing out on free school meals, reveals shocking new research by The Children’s Society.
And 700,000 are not entitled to free school meals at all, according to the Society’s report ‘Fair and Square’.
Yet the report shows that 91 per cent of UK adults believe that all children living in poverty should receive free school meals.
In this country, 2.2 million school children are living in poverty. The Children’s Society is so concerned that yesterday it launched a campaign to make sure that all children living in poverty can get a free school meal.
It stressed: ‘Free school meals provide vital financial support for low-income families. For almost a third of children, school lunch is their main meal of the day.’
The Children’s Society’s Fair and Square campaign exposes that eligibility for free school meals also has serious ramifications for families in low-paid work and those looking to move back into work.
It warned that the current situation is going to get much worse. ‘The planned introduction of Universal Credit means that many of the current benefits used to assess who is entitled to free school meals will be scrapped. A completely new system of entitlement is set to be put into place in the next year.’
The Children’s Society, backed by several organisations including the TUC, the Association of Lecturers and ‘Teachers and 4 Children’, wants the government to extend free school meals to all children living in poverty, including low-income working families.
The Children’s Society found: ‘At the moment, lone parents working 16 or more hours a week (24 hours per week for a couple) lose their entitlement to free school meals.
‘Nearly half (45 per cent) of parents are worried about the financial implications of moving back into work or taking additional hours.
‘Six out of ten parents (60 per cent) say that free school meal eligibility has a direct impact on their decision to move back into work, or work more hours.’
Children’s Society’s Campaign for Childhood director, Elaine Hindal, said: ‘We have shown that there are literally hundreds of thousands of children living below the poverty line who aren’t getting a free school meal. There is no reasonable defence for this policy failure.’
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Friday, 20 April 2012
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
HEY TORIES! LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE! - HANDS OFF CHILD BENEFITS!
http://www.wrp.org.uk/news/7456The News Line: News Tuesday, 17 April 2012HANDS OFF CHILD BENEFITS!
TEACHERS’ unions and children’s charities yesterday condemned government plans to raid the Child Benefits of families whose children have unauthorised absences from school.
Tory-LibDem coalition ‘behaviour tsar’, Charles Taylor urged that ‘truancy fines’ should be taken directly from child-benefit payments, claiming the current system of penalty notices is ‘ineffective’.
Taylor was asked by Education Secretary Gove to report on the issue of school attendance following the youth uprising last August.
His report, published yesterday, called for truancy fines to be increased from £50 to £60 and that if they remain unpaid after 28 days, they should then be doubled to £120, and automatically seized from child benefit payments.
Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, warned: ‘Deducting money from child benefit will have huge financial repercussions for many families.
‘Having less money for food and bills will simply create a whole new set of problems. Parents need to be part of the solution and not be further alienated from the education of their children.
‘We need properly resourced support systems, run by the local authority, which schools can call upon to deal with hard core truancy. With local authority budgets being so extensively cut this is increasingly difficult to achieve and is a reflection of the short-sightedness of this Government’s policies.
‘Replacing the repetitive test and targets culture of our schools with a relevant and flexible curriculum would certainly help to ensure all pupils remained engaged in education.’
Imran Hussain, Head of Policy, Child Poverty Action Group said: ‘Child poverty is already expected to rise as a consequence of this government’s policies.
‘Dropping more children into poverty is not the answer to truancy. Courts already have tough powers, including imprisonment, to deal with truancy.’
He added: ‘Fining poor families or cutting child benefit will undoubtedly lead to worse health and education outcomes and in the long term do more damage than good.’
Alison Garnham, Chief Executive, Child Poverty Action Group, responded: ‘Child benefit has been frozen. We know that it’s spent on meeting the cost of children, that’s what it’s for, but families are also facing a lot of austerity cuts – £18bn of benefit cuts. The Institute for Fiscal studies says there will be 800,000 more children in poverty by 2020.’
Family Action Chief Executive Helen Dent said: ‘Fining parents is not the best way to improve achievement and reduce truancy.
‘We know from working with the most disadvantaged and vulnerable families that the reason children are not in school often relates to problems parents are experiencing.
‘Docking child benefit will not improve outcomes for children, it will put more pressure on parents whose budgets are already being squeezed by cuts to welfare support and rising food and fuel prices.’
Alison Ryan, education policy adviser at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said: ‘Putting up fines is likely to hit the most vulnerable families and risks alienating them and their children even further from education.
‘Vulnerable families often need a range of solutions to support them such as parent support workers, Sure Start Centres to help parents who struggle with parenting, and mental health and social services to help tackle problems in chaotic home lives.
‘But government cuts to local authority budgets are hitting many of these support services, with Sure Start Centres closing and cuts to education psychologists and behaviour management staff.’
 |
| Demonstration outside parliament on January 11th against the Welfare Reform Bill |
Tory-LibDem coalition ‘behaviour tsar’, Charles Taylor urged that ‘truancy fines’ should be taken directly from child-benefit payments, claiming the current system of penalty notices is ‘ineffective’.
Taylor was asked by Education Secretary Gove to report on the issue of school attendance following the youth uprising last August.
His report, published yesterday, called for truancy fines to be increased from £50 to £60 and that if they remain unpaid after 28 days, they should then be doubled to £120, and automatically seized from child benefit payments.
Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, warned: ‘Deducting money from child benefit will have huge financial repercussions for many families.
‘Having less money for food and bills will simply create a whole new set of problems. Parents need to be part of the solution and not be further alienated from the education of their children.
‘We need properly resourced support systems, run by the local authority, which schools can call upon to deal with hard core truancy. With local authority budgets being so extensively cut this is increasingly difficult to achieve and is a reflection of the short-sightedness of this Government’s policies.
‘Replacing the repetitive test and targets culture of our schools with a relevant and flexible curriculum would certainly help to ensure all pupils remained engaged in education.’
Imran Hussain, Head of Policy, Child Poverty Action Group said: ‘Child poverty is already expected to rise as a consequence of this government’s policies.
‘Dropping more children into poverty is not the answer to truancy. Courts already have tough powers, including imprisonment, to deal with truancy.’
He added: ‘Fining poor families or cutting child benefit will undoubtedly lead to worse health and education outcomes and in the long term do more damage than good.’
Alison Garnham, Chief Executive, Child Poverty Action Group, responded: ‘Child benefit has been frozen. We know that it’s spent on meeting the cost of children, that’s what it’s for, but families are also facing a lot of austerity cuts – £18bn of benefit cuts. The Institute for Fiscal studies says there will be 800,000 more children in poverty by 2020.’
Family Action Chief Executive Helen Dent said: ‘Fining parents is not the best way to improve achievement and reduce truancy.
‘We know from working with the most disadvantaged and vulnerable families that the reason children are not in school often relates to problems parents are experiencing.
‘Docking child benefit will not improve outcomes for children, it will put more pressure on parents whose budgets are already being squeezed by cuts to welfare support and rising food and fuel prices.’
Alison Ryan, education policy adviser at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said: ‘Putting up fines is likely to hit the most vulnerable families and risks alienating them and their children even further from education.
‘Vulnerable families often need a range of solutions to support them such as parent support workers, Sure Start Centres to help parents who struggle with parenting, and mental health and social services to help tackle problems in chaotic home lives.
‘But government cuts to local authority budgets are hitting many of these support services, with Sure Start Centres closing and cuts to education psychologists and behaviour management staff.’
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