Cost-of-living crisis threatens ‘devastating’ impact on vulnerable children
Nicole Weinstein
Monday, September 5, 2022
Organisations working with families have warned of the “devastating” consequences the cost-of-living crisis is having on children’s health, education and wellbeing.
Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive of charity Become, the charity that supports looked-after children and young care leavers, said that more children facing the most “vulnerable, precarious situations” are likely to end up in care as a result of a cost-of-living crisis that will have “devastating and long-lasting consequences for those children who most need support and protection”.
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She said: “It is well known that poverty impacts on children's health and well-being. Less well known is the growing evidence that poverty is a major factor in child abuse and neglect – the leading reason for children entering the care system.”
Mothers’ inability to escape abusive partners as a result of financial hardships is cited by Sacks-Jones as one of the reasons that more children are at risk of entering care.
She said in her blog: “We also know that the rising cost-of-living has impacted on mothers’ ability to escape abusive partners, with nearly three quarters of domestic abuse victims saying it has stopped them escaping…or made it harder for them to leave – this will result in yet more children at risk of entering care.”
She added: “We already have record numbers of children in care – over 100, 000 in the UK - and a system at breaking point. This could leave tens of thousands more children in a broken care system that is not fit for purpose.”
Meanwhile, Dr Patrick Roach, general secretary of teaching union NASUWT, said that there can be “little doubt” that the cost-of-living crisis is harming pupils’ education, learning and development.
Six in ten teachers responding to its survey of more than 6,500 teachers said that by the end of the last academic year more pupils were coming to school hungry and nearly seven in ten said more of their pupils were lacking in energy and concentration.
Fifty eight percent of teachers said they had given food or clothing to their pupils and six in ten said they had made referrals to outside agencies, with 35 percent saying they had helped a pupil’s family get access to a foodbank.
The Scottish Children’s Services Coalition (SCSC), an alliance of leading providers of specialist children’s services, has warned of a “child mental health emergency” caused by the cost-of-living crisis, driven by increasing energy costs.
With children living in low-income households three times more likely to suffer mental health problems than their more affluent peers, SCSC said that young people will experience worse mental health as a result of the current crisis and as families fall behind with their bills, causing increased anxiety.