The Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s (OCC) primary function is to promote and protect children’s rights in England. As part of its work, the OCC sent a response to Government’s child poverty strategy 2014-2017 and concluded that the current draft has significant gaps that will do little to halt, or even slow, the worrying increase in the numbers of children and young people living in poverty across the country.
According to the document, the British Government will fail to meet its legal obligation under the Child Poverty Act and its commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The response highlights that the draft strategy should be strengthened, namely in the need to:
- take full account of the wider Government policy context where fiscal decisions and economic policy undermine many positive measures like the pupil premium or aspects of childcare policy
- use of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as a framework to test whether the Government is meeting its international obligations regarding the impact of poverty on rights all children should enjoy
- take full account of the services and opportunities children and young people themselves say are important to them in their experience of poverty and their ability to lift themselves out of poverty
Maggie Atkinson, the Children’s Commissioner for England, referred to the report at an event organised by the Child Poverty Action Group UK, where she discussed whether the response to the financial crisis adequately protects the childhoods and life chances of children.