We don't notice poverty in the same way that we notice natural disasters because it has always been here and there's a general feeling that there's nothing we can do about it. Because we feel we can't do anything, it continues to always be here - the archetypal vicious circle.
You do start to prick your ears up when you realise that poverty is not just something that happened in Dickensian times and is not confined only to so-called Third World countries. Poverty is right here and with us now. In the UK today there are 3.8 million children and young people living in poverty. The figure seems incredible, outrageous even. How can we expect these young people to contribute to society when they are barely part of it?
Shelter's End Child Poverty campaign, which The National Youth Agency wholeheartedly supports, aims to encourage the government to meet its targets to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it by 2020. The reason it's so important to act now is that for anything like this success to happen in the due time, the government will need to have adequately funded and well managed programmes in place, and it'll need to have those operational by 2009.
If you want a measure of the severity of the problem, just take a look at housing. A Shelter survey found that children without a permanent home missed an average of 55 school days, and that those living in bad housing are twice as likely to suffer from seriously poor health and twice as likely to leave school without any GCSEs. That's before you even get into the difficulties that parents in poverty face in funding childcare when they do get the chance to work, or of funding their education.
Few parents want to see their children suffer; most want to find workable ways of helping themselves. That's why The National Youth Agency urges all those who work with young people to support the End Child Poverty campaign. Visit the campaign website www.endchildpoverty.org.uk.
