My son is in his 'I can do it myself' era. This morning, this drive for independence saw an avalanche of cereal rain down from the table as he misjudged the weight of the box when he poured it into his bowl.
I'd had just enough sleep to give me the patience to respond calmly. 'It's OK' I said, 'these things happen'. Those words show my privilege. For me, it was OK because I knew we had more cereal. I am fortunate enough to have other options in my cupboard for my children if they are hungry.
I can only imagine how different my reaction would have been if this wasn't my reality. If the cereal spilled on the floor was all we had left for a week. If I had to rely on food banks to feed my family. I would have been annoyed and irritated. There's no way I would have delivered a patient and understanding response. My child would have been upset and confused by my seemingly huge and unwarranted reaction to a simple accident. There would have been numerous ripple effects from this one spillage, if we were a family living in poverty. I'm sharing this because it's all I've been thinking about since reading the news yesterday morning, as labour uphold, and seemingly celebrate the fact that the harmful two-child benefit limit was not voted in as an amendment to the kings speech.
It makes me think about all the families I have met who needed financial support more than anything. So many families who had social work intervention imposed on them because poverty heightened everything that was stressful in their lives. Families who asked for help and ended up stuck under a 'framework of surveillance' (Devine, 2015). In other words, 'what you actually needed was money but we decided to unfairly focus on your parenting and blame you for problems that you aren't responsible for.'
Living in poverty impacts every single element of a child's life. It throws family life into disarray, places additional stress and anxiety on parents which they have little control over. We should always be looking through an intersectional and anti- racist lens as social workers, and inequalities across health, housing and education will always disproportionately impact children and families who are racialised as black and brown, and who are part of the global majority (CPAG).
I'm sharing the cereal spill as one tiny example of how everything is exacerbated by poverty. I am sure if you are a social worker reading this you will have many examples of families who may have been able to cope with some of the challenges in their lives, if poverty had not been a contextual factor.
BASW support the abolishment of the two child benefit cap, recognising the significant poverty impacting children in the UK by including this in their Social Work Stands Against Poverty Campaign asks.
So for the current government to vote to keep this costly and harmful limit in place worries me for two main reasons:
One, because it keeps children in poverty. Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 defines neglect as the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development. If a parent made an active choice to harm a child knowing there was an alternative, we would start child protection processes. But this government do it and there is no accountability for what presents to me as institutional neglect.
Two, because a further message has been sent; disagree or dissent and you will be punished. 7 MP's have had the whip removed for voting in opposition to their party. 7 MP's reprimanded for putting forward a view that is also a key part of the British Association of Social Worker's campaign against poverty. What does this say about how our profession is viewed by this government?
There's such a huge focus on the public perception of social work and the mainstream of the narrative looks at media portrayal. But I think we need to start higher than that. Until we are respected and valued by the government, we will keep struggling. And if we don't tow the party line, agree with their narrative or dare to disagree... well I'm sure we'll soon see what will happen.
I don't like ending blog posts without hope or action, so if you feel as angry as me, there are some things you can do:
Write to your MP - it might feel empty but numbers really do matter
Don't avoid writing about poverty in your assessments - you know we always say if it's not recorded then it didn't happen - well it's the same with contextual factors
Listen to this podcast episode - recorded on a day that I needed hope and action, to help someone like you
References:
Featherstone, Brid & Morris, Kate & Daniel, Brigid & Bywaters, Paul & Brady, Geraldine & Bunting, Lisa & Mason, Will & Mirza, Nughmana. (2017). Poverty, Inequality, Child Abuse and Neglect: Changing the Conversation across the UK in Child Protection?. Children and Youth Services Review. 97. 10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.06.009
Devine, Lauren. (2015). Considering social work assessment of families. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law. 37. 10.1080/09649069.2015.998005.
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