The Children's Rights Alliance has awarded the Government an 'E' grade in 'Family Homelessness' in its Report Card 2022.
The organisation states that "all the lessons we have learned from the pandemic to help improve the lives of children and young people must be a key focus for Government in 2022."
Speaking at the launch of the Report Card today, Tanya Ward, CEO of the Children’s Rights Alliance, said:
“Over the past two years, children and young people have been forced to adapt to a different way of life, and now we are asking them to go back to the way things were before. During the pandemic, we saw a meaningful decrease in the numbers of families with children experiencing homelessness, yet in 2021 that number has started to creep back up again. We saw that Government could take meaningful action with dedicated policies that had a positive impact on the number of families experiencing homelessness.
The Government’s emergency response to the pandemic in 2020 had a strong focus on preventative measures and resulted in fewer families in emergency accommodation. There is a strong appetite now after the challenges of COVID-19 to change things for the better; we should be building on what worked well rather than simply returning to the way things were before. We can’t allow progress to reverse.
While there was a welcome target of ending homelessness by 2030 and key measures in the Government’s new Housing for All Strategy, published in 2021, there is a need to introduce additional measures to step-up efforts to tackle child and family homelessness particularly for those who are disproportionately impacted including one parent families, Traveller families, families with disabilities and people leaving Direct Provision. This is why the Government gets an ‘E’ grade in this area, down from a ‘C’ grade last year.”
In December 2021, there were 1,077 families experiencing homelessness and 2,451 children experiencing homelessness; by the end of 2021, almost one in four children living in emergency accommodation in Dublin were there for more than two years.
The Report Card 2022 can be accessed by clicking HERE.
The full press release can be accessed by clicking HERE.