It is now widely accepted that the government's ambitious pledge to halve child poverty by this year will not be met.
According to latest figures there are still 2.9 million children living in poverty before housing costs are taken into account, around 650,000 short of the government's target.
With recession set to bring wholesale public sector cuts and job losses over the next year, the government's wider pledge of ending child poverty by 2020 is also now in jeopardy.
Despite the disappointment, children's campaigners and social policy experts are urging politicians not to give up on the target.
Kate Stanley, director at think tank Institute for Public Policy Research, says: "Not hitting the 2010 target should not mean we lose focus. If anything current financial problems mean reducing child poverty is more important than ever."
Working poor
While Stanley favours reducing unemployment as a priority, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says ministers ignore poverty among working families at their peril.
In its 2009 report Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion the foundation says the number of children in low income working households was 2.1 million, half a million more than in 2003/04.
Chris Golden, policy and research programme manager at Joseph Rowntree, says: "Many families are finding themselves working fewer hours or not getting the pay rises they would expect. They need help just as much as those out of work."
Improving public understanding of poverty also needs to be a focus for child poverty campaigning during 2010, says Golden.
"There is still an image among the public and the media that some poverty is deserved, that some people are simply being work-shy," he says.
Save £25bn
Samantha Hyde, director of End Child Poverty, also hopes politicians better understand the financial benefits of investing in programmes that tackle child poverty. The charity estimates that eradicating child poverty would save around £25bn.
The Child Poverty Bill, which could become law by April, aims to clarify the 2020 child poverty target and make it a legal duty of government. Among proposed targets for 2020 is to reduce the proportion of children living in low-income families to below 10 per cent. Even though this is a dramatic improvement on the current level of 23 per cent, End Child Poverty believes this does not go far enough.
Councils also need to be doing more in 2010 to reduce child poverty, according to Andrew Cozens, strategic adviser at the Improvement and Development Agency, which last year granted beacon status to councils with a strong focus on addressing child poverty.
He says: "Failure to address it can lead to a generation losing out and experiencing poorer outcomes."
Among those to receive the accolade was Newcastle City Council, which has concentrated on more tailored support for families in poverty. This has included programmes to support teenage fathers and extra financial support for unemployed parents during the first months of starting a new job.
Abby Holder, the council's policy and research officer, says: "We also focus on family education with our schools, offering maths, English and IT classes to parents and also courses about how they can help with their children's education. This helps self-esteem and parents have gone on to further education through this."
Child poverty in the noughties: Rys Farthing looks back at how poverty was dealt with in the past decade.
"The past decade marked something of a watershed in the fight against child poverty. For much of the 1980s and 90s poverty in Britain was rendered invisible by politicians who insisted it was a third-world issue.
Finally, in 1999, the illusion was shattered when Tony Blair declared an end to the shameful reality of child poverty in the UK by 2020.
Reflecting renewed political enthusiasm, the decade started with significant wins. When the pledge was made 4.2 million children were living in poverty, by 2004/05 this had dropped to 3.6 million. A battery of strategies was instrumental to this early success, with a focus on 'work for those who can' and 'security for those who can't'.
A childcare strategy, working tax credits, and welfare to work policies were introduced to get more parents into work, while financial support via child tax credits and child benefits improved the safety net.
The later half of the decade, however, saw a disappointing reversal in earlier gains. There are currently four million children in poverty. We are 650,000 children over the 2010 halfway target.
Children are unnecessarily damaged by poverty and these childhoods cannot be relived when we improve our policy. It also makes poor financial sense; the cost of child poverty is estimated at £25bn per year, while experts argue we could meet the target of £4.2bn per year it will cost to reduce child poverty.
Tackling child poverty requires a focus on both the low incomes that drive families into poverty and the deprivations that children experience. While protecting jobs and removing barriers to work may enable families to move into employment, with in-work poverty at an all time high more needs to be done to create high quality, sustainable jobs. For families where work is not an option, the safety net needs to lift children out of poverty. Current inadequacies, complexities and stigma mean the system fails many families that are reliant on benefits."
- Rys Farthing is policy and research officer at the Child Poverty Action Group.
