Preventing Poor Children Becoming Poor Adults - Assignment Example

 Preventing Poor Children Becoming Poor Adults Evenin this millennium, there are issues that kids have to deal with today in the United Kingdom, among them being the problem of child poverty.Child poverty makes children to miss out on childhood and prevents them from enjoying equal opportunities as other children from well off backgrounds. Child poverty in this case means that the children are deprived of safe drinking water, good education, good nutrition, good shelter and good health services. 1. Global poverty is falling rapidly; but in fifty or so failing states the world’s poorest people the bottom billion face a tragedy that is growing inexorably worse (From the dust jacket of Collier (2008) The Bottom Billion). Discuss. They are also at risk of being exploited as they look for all types of manual jobs to fend for themselves. Children from poor backgrounds are also more prone to drugs abuse and discrimination(Deparle& Collier 2013, p.45).A recent study observed that 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. The number of families and children that find difficulty in acquiring basic needs and educational needs has kept increasing over time. The proportion of children living in poverty in the United Kingdom has increased from 24% to 25.6% (Deparle& Collier 2013, p.45).The United Kingdom needs to address this issue of child poverty in a fundamentally different way if it is to make a real change to children’s life chances as adults. In order to come up with ways on how this issue can be addressed, there is need to understand the causes of child poverty in the United Kingdom. It’s always said that solving a problem starts with understanding the root causes. Often, a child is at great risk of living in poverty if he or she is in a family where no one works, lives in a household where someone is disabled, has a single parent that is not so able or has a large family with many children (Collier 2008). When a household has many children, it risks subjecting them to poverty because the few available resources have to be utilized to raise all of them. The main cause of child poverty in the United Kingdom is pre-marital pregnancy. Premarital pregnancy forces many girls not to complete their education (Jordan 2009). As it is, without education aperson cannot get good employment that will enable them to fend for the children. Also, most people who are involved in pre-marital pregnancies end up being single parents who have low paying jobs. Parents who have low levels of education are usually unable to get well and high paying jobs. Even if they get them, it takes many years and a lot of struggle. Before they get to these well-paying jobs children born to them will be deprived of some things because their paycheck is not enough to cater for some needs. Parents with no education often miss out on job opportunities and are placed on welfare or government funding which is also not enough to cater for all the needs of the children. Children born to low income families are prone to poverty (Odekon 2006). This is because the birth of a child doesn’t change the parent’s paycheck. If the parent receives a certain paycheck, when the child is born, they will have to share the paycheck to meet the needs of the individual and those of the child. In some cases the parent’s paycheck is not even enough to meet their needs so when a baby is born it becomes difficult to meet their needs hence leading to poverty. If a family has many expenses outside the basic needs, it is prone to poverty. These expenses may range from taxes, health care, clothing, utilities and school supplies (Blesch& McKinney 2014, p.48). Although this kind of family may be able to clothe, feed and educate their children, these continuous expenses push them to poverty. Another cause for childhood poverty in the United Kingdom is family breakdown or poverty. This could be either divorce, death, an accident a fire outbreak or flooding. The death of the sole bread earner forces children left behind to live in poverty. Also, destruction of family assets by a tragedy such as a fire forces the family to live in lack. Hereditary poverty is also a cause for child poverty (Nikulina&Czaja 2011,p.315-8). This is the kind of poverty that keeps being passed from generation to generation. For instance, children from single parents are also more likely to become teen parents, school drop outs and drug users, hence maintaining the poverty cycle. Lastly, an emerging cause of child poverty is teen parenthood. This is a case whereby children who are unable to support themselves end up having children to support(Deparle& Collier 2013, p.45). Statics show that about 50% of pregnant teenagers get pregnant again while they are teenagers. From the above causes, lack of good education stands out. Poverty is both a cause and effect of lack of access to good education. Poverty increases the likelihood of a child not to graduate for school and the likelihood of the child to miss more school days compared to the children from well off families. Provision of education to a child is related to the child’s ability to earn enough and stay out of poverty. The quality of people in a nation affects economic growth. If a nation raises more children with low education levels, it discourages investments and encourages poverty hence a low or stunted economic growth. Youths from low income people score lower on learning and math valuations before starting nursery school. This gap continues to increase as students’ progress through school. In these cases, teachers and officials in school fail to see past the poverty of low income students and this creates disadvantages for these students as they are discriminated in some cases (Welsh 2008, p.112). Students from low income households are more likely to quit school. Studies show that students in low income homes are three times more likely to drop out of school than those from average income homes and nine times more likely than students from high income homes.Therefore, lack of quality education encourages poverty and breaking this cycle is the key to overcoming child poverty in the United Kingdom. If poor children have to be prevented from becoming poor adults, The United Kingdom government should provide equal education opportunities to make sure that children from low income households access good education equal to that of children from high income households(Welsh 2008, p.112). It should also take into account the efforts in providing these opportunities. The strategies that involve in provision of quality education to children help the United Kingdom government increase children’s life chances as adults. This report focuses more on provision of quality education since it is the only sure way of eradicating poverty. Increased income does not automatically protect poor children from the risk of being poor adults. Preventing Poor Children Becoming Poor adults, gives the strategy on how to meet the Government’s goal of ending child poverty and increasing children’s life chances as adults (Heuveline&Weinshenker 2008, p.178).It is a policy for social mobility, in that it should result in today’s poor children gaining the skills to acquire good and highly paid jobs. This strategy aims at changing the shape of the distribution of income by eliminating the large numbers of people who leave schools for a lifetime characterized by low paying jobs and inability to acquire basic needs (Field 2010). This report was appointed by the Prime Minister and printed by the Independent Evaluationon Scarcity and Life Chances. It proposes that in order to prevent poor children from becoming poor adults, new measures and Life Chances Indicators should be established to run along with the existing financial poverty measures. Life Chances Indicators will be established to help measure how successful the United Kingdom is as a nation in making life’s outcomes more equal for all children in the nation. To make this proposition successful, the report further proposes establishinga pillar of a new tripartite education system which will cover the Children’s lifetime from conception to five years. The Base Years will then lead into school years. School years will eventually lead to further, higher and continuing education. The main objective of the Foundation Years is to improve life chances of poor children. Services of the Foundation Years will be paid according to the children’s success in narrowing class differences as they start school. The Foundation Years were proposed since children’s development in the first five years of life have a big impact on their life chances and hence the reason why the government should fund these years. More funds are allocated to the more disadvantaged children. Although this report mainly focuses on the early years of life, it also establishes that important changes take place even after the early years. Investment in only the first five years of life is not enough to end child poverty and therefore needs a follow up with quality services for the children who may need them at later stages of life. The report recommends that support should be evidence based and data about the activities should be collected and shared so as to enable monitoring and evaluation of the new approaches. This report brings up a shift in the focus of child poverty in such a way that it addresses other factors that tend to affect children’s life chances (Heuveline&Weinshenker 2008, p.180). These factors include positive though authoritative parenting, high quality childcare, healthy pregnancies, and positive approach to learning at home and parent’s qualifications to parenting. This report observes that parents are the main determinants of their children’s life chances, regardless of whom they are, the kind of job they do, their race and how they nurture their children. Parental engagement with their children’s education is a key factor in making this strategy successful (Welsh 2008, p.112). Parents should avoid factors that cause strain to this involvement, for instance, stress causes strain in parent’s relationship with their children and as a result they will not be able to engage in their educational matters. Schools should be more involved with the children’s parents. Activities in the Foundation Years, from a child’s conception to five years of age, will mainly focus on enabling parents to move into ‘what parents do’ category and therefore foster the success of their children. This report states that schools should teach parenting and life skills throughout the whole of school life, as suggested by children. Through this, students will learn how they can improve the lives of their children when they start a family. According to this report, the government should not automatically increase benefits for the school going children every year and instead consider if the money to be spent in automatically renewing these benefits in that year could be used more effectively to increase life chances for other children (Welsh 2008, p.112). This money could be used to build up the Foundation Years and establishing the Life Chance Indicators to measure its progress in widening life chances for poor children at the age of ten and then again until the end of their high school years. The report further proposes that schools should be held to account for reducing the attainment gap along with raising the overall standards. Establishment of Life Chances Indicators will measure, at a national, the children’s physical and emotional development at the ages of three years and four years, which will help determine their outcome later in life (Hopkins 2007). The report further states that the Life Chances Indicators should be published every year by the Government so that citizens can see the progress being made to prevent poor children from becoming poor adults. These indicators should also be calculated at a local level so that individual parents can be able to account for the progress of their children individually. Indicators at the local level should show whether the local authority is running the Foundation Years as they should be run in order to increase the chances for more poor children. This strategy overall aim is to provide good education and offer equal chances for education for all the children regardless of their background through financing. It also seeks to ensure provision of quality education through continuous monitoring and evaluation (Field 2010). All in all,itis reliable and efficient in making sure that poor children don’t end up being poor adults. The United Kingdom government should do this to fulfill their commitment to children because everyone holds them accountable. The evidence that many children are living in poverty in the United Kingdom and knowledge about the causes of child poverty calls upon the government, the community and the private sector to work towards realizing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). If they work together, the rate of child poverty can be reduced and consequently increase the children’s chances in life as adults. Bibliography Blesch, G, Rice, S, & McKinney, M 2014, 'CMS names hospital winners, losers on quality incentives', Modern Healthcare, 44, 51, p. 0010, OmniFile Full Text Select (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost, viewed 14 April 2015. COLLIER, P 2008, The bottom billion: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Deparle, J, & COLLIER, P 2013, 'ASSIMILATION NATION', Atlantic, 312, 4, Pp. 44-46, Omnifile Full Text Select (H.W. Wilson), Ebscohost, Viewed 14 April 2015. DRIOUCHI, A., & ACHEHBOUNE, A 2014, Potential Skilled Labor Migration, Internationalization of Education with Focus on Medical Education. Frank F 2010, Your MP for Birkenhead. Review on Poverty and Life Chances. Heuveline, P, &Weinshenker, M 2008, 'The International Child Poverty Gap: Does Demography Matter?', Demography, 45, 1, pp. 173-191, OmniFile Full Text Select (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost, viewed 14 April 2015. HOPKINS, D J 2007, When differences divide: how national influences and local demographics shape politics between ethnic groups. Thesis (Ph.D., Dept. of Government)--Harvard University, 2007. Jeff J 2009, Covering poverty and education, A Tool Kit for Journalists about Covering Povert. < http://www.coveringpoverty.org/tutorials/education/> MORALES, Z 2014, 'Fighting CRIME to end Extreme Poverty and Boost Shared Prosperity',UN Chronicle, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 23-24. Nikulina, V, Widom, C, &Czaja, S 2011, 'The Role of Childhood Neglect and Childhood Poverty in Predicting Mental Health, Academic Achievement and Crime in Adulthood', American Journal Of Community Psychology, 48, 3/4, pp. 309-321, OmniFile Full Text Select (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost, viewed 14 April 2015. ODEKON, M 2006, Encyclopedia of world poverty.Thousand Oaks, Calif, SAGE Publications.Viewed 14 April 2015 http://site.ebrary.com/id/10375927. Welsh, P J 2008, Social Deprivation, Community Cohesion, Denominational Education and Freedom of Choice: A Marxist Perspective on Poverty and Exclusion in the District of Thanet.JournalFor Critical Education Policy Studies (JCEPS), 6(2), 94-111. Read More