CYP Now - INTERVIEW: Dogged and determined - Jonathan Stearn director, End Child Poverty

Jonathan Stearn means business. The new director of End Child Poverty wants to match his achievements at Age Concern, where he won winter fuel payments for pensioners. He likens his role to that of both a watchdog and a rottweiler. "You can make changes by getting hold of these things and not letting go," he says.

Stearn has a packed agenda for tackling child poverty and first on his list is keeping the Government on track to eradicate it by 2020. A Department for Work and Pensions report appeared to abandon this pledge, shifting the goal to a poverty rate "among the best" in Europe.

With 3.9 million children living in poverty, the UK has one of the worst rates of child poverty in the industrialised world. The proportion has grown from one in 10 in 1979 to one in three in 1998. The Government's apparent new target would leave between one in 10 and one in 20 children in poverty by 2020. It will aim to see that the poorest families' incomes rise, the income gap between poor and typical families narrows, and fewer children lack essential goods and services.

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