Background
On 7 November 2024, as part of its statutory remit, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) produced a report into child poverty in Northern Ireland. This was against a backdrop of the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) report ‘Child Poverty in Northern Ireland’ which demonstrated significant growth in child poverty despite the existence of the Child Poverty Strategy (2016-2022).
About a quarter of children now live in relative poverty.
The Executive’s Child Poverty Strategy was originally developed by the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister before being passed to the Department for Communities for monitoring and reporting. The main aims of the Strategy were to reduce the number of children in poverty and to reduce the impact of poverty on children. It contained four high level outcomes to work toward those aims.
Key findings of the PAC report
- There was no ring-fenced budget to implement the Child Poverty Strategy. The absence of ring-fenced budgets severely limited departments’ ability to implement new interventions and so the Strategy was largely a list of interventions already in place prior to 2016.
- The Strategy lacked targets to reduce child poverty levels and there was insufficient focus on specific actions which could have made the biggest difference.
- There was a lack of flexibility in the way the Strategy was implemented and monitored. The responsible Department failed to implement effective monitoring arrangements to meaningfully assess the impact actions were having and identify the need for change on an ongoing basis.
Key recommendations of the PAC report
- The Department of Communities should report back to the PAC to confirm that timescales are on track for a regional anti-poverty strategy to be presented to the Executive by 31 March 2025.
- The Committee recommends that the proposed anti-poverty strategy includes an action plan with a range of clearly defined indicators, measures and targets aimed at quantifying and reducing poverty.
- The Committee recommends that the action plan prepared with an anti-poverty strategy is properly costed, and outlines which specific actions can be delivered from existing budgets and those which require further dedicated funding.
- The Committee recommends that the Department of Finance works with other departments to review barriers to the enhanced utilisation of the Children’s Services Co-operation Act (Northern Ireland) 2015 and by December 2025 produce an agreed action plan to reduce and remove these barriers.
RCPCH response
Dr Rory Sweeney, Deputy Officer for Ireland said:
It’s shocking to see how the Child Poverty Strategy failed in so many ways. It is difficult to comprehend how failure was allowed to persist for so long to the extent this report found the Strategy had no impact at all. Indeed, poverty levels are higher across all measures than when the Strategy began.
Paediatricians see daily the impact of poverty on children and young people's lives - wreaking havoc on their childhood, limiting their life chances and worsening both their mental and physical health. Dealing with the effects of poverty causes significant drains on the public purse while effective prevention strategies can improve lives and finances long-term.
The last Child Poverty Strategy had serious flaws, which we highlighted at the time of publication, such as a lack of targets, accountability, co-ordination and funding. The fact that the Public Accounts Committee observed the same and made recommendations toward ensuring lessons are learned, instils some hope that the forthcoming NI Anti-Poverty Strategy will observe and learn from the failures of the Child Poverty Strategy and improve outcomes for our future generations.