Jane O’Sullivan is Solicitor and Policy Officer with Community Law & Mediation.
Community Law & Mediation has published a pre-Budget submission on Children and the Social Welfare code. The purpose of this submission is to highlight the impact on children of changes to the social welfare code and policies around that code. In shaping social welfare policy, finite resources undoubtedly present limitations. This submission examines the choices made within those constraints and makes recommendations for the choices that will be made in Budget 2016. Such scrutiny is essential to ensure that social welfare policy is capable of addressing the needs of the most vulnerable children within our society.
The social welfare system, along with the manner of its administration, acts as a social safety net and a practical indicator of the extent to which the State protects children from poverty and discrimination. When changes to social welfare and social welfare policy disproportionately affect the most vulnerable and the poorest families it is inevitable that children in those families suffer long-term adverse consequences.
The lives we lead are shaped by the circumstances of our childhood. Poverty is insidious, having long-term consequences for a child’s health, education and the chances he or she has in life. Children living in poverty are marginalised and excluded and often trapped in the kind of intergenerational poverty that can be insurmountable. The EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions tells us that in 2013, 12% of children (aged 0-17) lived in consistent poverty – more than 137,000 children. This is an increase on the 9.9% recorded in 2012 and double the figure of 6% in 2008. What these figures mean is that nearly one in eight children live in consistent poverty in Ireland today. There are many ways in which the social welfare code and related budgetary decisions affect children. So wide-ranging are these effects, that this submission is limited to a few particular areas, to highlight more general concerns. For example, we look at the children of non-Irish nationals, children whose housing is dependent on access to Rent Supplement and children in households where the head of household is parenting alone, of which nearly two thirds (63%) experience deprivation.
We look at how current policy around child income support fits in with a rights based agenda focused on eradicating child poverty and inequality. We have confined our attentions to certain topical issues and matters that have come to our notice in the course of representing clients and working with other organisations. We have also been informed by the discussions that took place at the roundtable Social Welfare Law and Children, held by CLM on 17th November 2014. The discussions at the roundtable were prefaced by presentations by Mr. Colin Smith, Barrister at Law and Adjunct Lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, and Ms. Saoirse Brady, Policy Officer, Children’s Rights Alliance.
For many children, the reality of budgets that lack human rights and equality proofing is in fact regression. We submit that children are uniquely vulnerable and that the state is under an obligation to recognise this in its budgetary decisions and its social welfare policy. Our recommendations present viable and very practical alternatives for decision-makers around Budget 2016.
Click here for the full submission.