The Big Question: How can we help end child poverty in Australia?
This week's posts are being sourced by the Life Course Centre(@lifecourseAust) to continue to the conversation on social and economic disadvantage following last week’s Anti-Poverty Week (@AntiPovertyWeek). Today @lifecourseAust researchers share approaches that could help end child poverty in Australia.
Why? Photo by Pixabay.
Ending child poverty in Australia remains a challenging and unmet goal. It’s estimated about one in six children – more than 760,000 young Australians – are experiencing poverty. This is a number that some expect to rise as the cost-of-living crisis deepens, disproportionately affecting families already struggling with financial hardship.
Much like a jigsaw puzzle, many different strategies and approaches need to fit together to help address poverty in this country – which affects a child’s health, mental health and well-being.
What are some approaches that can be put in place to help end child poverty in Australia? Some Life Course Centre researchers share their insights.
Housing
Dr Ella Kuskoff (@EllaKuskoff) and Professor Cameron Parsell (@cameronparsell) – The University of Queensland
Permanent supportive housing is an evidence-informed approach that contributes to measurably reducing child poverty and other forms of family exclusion. Here we draw on a multi-method research project examining Brisbane’s Keeping Families Together (KFT) program to demonstrate how affordable housing, along with wraparound family-centred support, provides both the material resources and opportunities to enable parents to stabilise housing and improve the conditions of their children’s lives.
Our KFT research represents three important lessons for what is required to contribute towards an Australian society where childhood poverty is ended for marginalised families and prevented at the societal level.
1. Direct intervention into the housing market is required to create accessible, affordable, and sustainable housing for families experiencing poverty. Direct intervention requires government intervention through a range of means, for example by demonstrably increasing the supply of social housing in the long term and creatively leveraging existing stock through subsidies to achieve affordability for low-income families. With direct and supported access to affordable housing, families experiencing poverty can have the material resources that enable them to change the conditions of their lives.
2. Our research demonstrated that with both affordable housing and integrated support, statutory child protection authorities deemed parents were both willing and able to care for and protect their children. Rather than counselling or parental intervention, it was the presence of affordable housing that represented the greatest protective factor and means for parents to create safe and loving homes for their children.
3. The research also offers evidence-informed analysis of how parents who had access to affordable housing, along with integrated support, were able to create the conditions that enabled a range of benefits to children. Parents who accessed permanent supportive housing, for example, were able to enhance their children’s school and early childhood education attendance, contribute to the realisation of fundamental child development milestones, and overcome barriers to accessing much-needed health and psychosocial support.
The take-home from our research is that permanent supportive housing is one resource that can effectively contribute toward ending and preventing childhood poverty. The effectiveness of providing families experiencing poverty with affordable housing and linked support is beyond question; the urgent question that Australia must confront is how can society collectively mobilise to bring about the required permanent supportive – and, indeed, affordable – housing that is required to end childhood poverty.
Access to early childhood care
Professor Guyonne Kalb and Dr Barbara Broadway – University of Melbourne
When children grow up in poverty, they often don’t have the same opportunities as children whose families are financially better-off. At the start of school, many of the children who have been experiencing poverty are already behind.
Access to Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) can help to eliminate or reduce this gap. However, at present, Australia’s ECEC sector still has some of the highest fees in the world, and parents’ entitlement to subsidies depends on the time they spend on certain activities, such as employment or education. This activity test does not support the ECEC sector’s primary purpose, which is to educate children. In fact, the activity test potentially excludes children from ECEC that may benefit the most.
The Productivity Commission’s recent report: A path to universal early childhood education and care provides timely policy recommendations to ‘support affordable, accessible, equitable and high-quality ECEC’. This would be achieved through (i) abolishing the activity test and (ii) by increasing the childcare subsidy rate (to be called ECEC subsidy rate) to 100% for families with a total income of less than $80k/year (with a higher threshold for families with multiple children in ECEC). Importantly, the Productivity Commission’s report also includes recommendations to ensure a pathway to a substantially increased supply of ECEC.
The Productivity Commission argues that universal access does not require universal free access, and the proposed targeted increase in subsidies is much less costly than some of the modelled alternatives, while bringing greater benefits to families in need. This is important for the long-term sustainability of these subsidies.
In addition, low-income families who now have access to free childcare and early childhood education will be able to respond to potential education and/or employment opportunities more easily. This may then reduce the household’s poverty without imposing the up-front stress of having to secure a job first before being able to gain access to affordable childcare.
Sole Parent support
Dr Alice Campbell – The University of Queensland
One of the most important things that we can do to help end child poverty in Australia is provide adequate support to parents – in particular, sole parents. Children in sole parent families are more than three times as likely to live in poverty as children in two-parent families [Poverty-in-Australia-2020-Part-2-–-Who-is-affected_Final.pdf (acoss.org.au)].
Over the past year, I have spoken to sole parents from all walks of life across Australia. They have told me what they need to keep their families out of poverty. Here are the top three:
Fix the child support system. Too many children are missing out on financial support from their non-resident parent – support that they need and are entitled to. The current system contains too many loopholes. Meanwhile, resident parents are burdened with the mental load of navigating a broken system.
Support sole parents in their employment. Most sole parents are in paid employment, but the income they gain is quickly offset by childcare costs and reductions in family tax benefits/income support payments. Childcare should be free and income taper rates reduced [https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/4134467/Breaking-Down-Barriers-Report-5-June-2022.pdf].
Increase the supply of social housing. Housing stress is raised by many sole parents that I speak to. Social housing provides sole parents and their children with safety and stability. The affordable rent that social housing comes with also allows some to start putting money aside and eventually buy their own home. This is the kind of upward mobility that the government should be supporting and celebrating.
My research has shown me how determined, motivated, and hard-working most sole parents are. They will do everything they can to secure a better life for their children.
The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (Life Course Centre) is a national research centre investigating the critical factors underlying deep and persistent disadvantage to provide new knowledge and life-changing solutions for policy, service providers and communities.
Posted by @LifeCourseAust