Children and Young People’s Experiences and Views of Poverty and Inequality: Policy and Practice Implications is a Scottish Universities Insight Institute funded programme co-led by Dr Daniela Sime, Reader at the University of Strathclyde, and Professor Joan Forbes from the Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection at Stirling. In this forum, participants have closely examined and debated a number of important and timely questions and issues on Poverty and Children. This blog provides a short overview of the issues considered, and a link to the SUII site where full materials from the programme can be found.
Children’s unequal outcomes –
To interrogate children’s unequal outcomes in Scotland and beyond, and to deliberate research and implications for policy and practice, a number of questions were explored by programme participants – including children and young people, speakers, and workshop presenters. For example:
What do we know about children and young people’s experiences of poverty in Scotland?
What can we learn from other countries about approaches to tackling social inequalities?
How does poverty impact on children’s subjective wellbeing across countries in Europe and the marginalization of children and young people?
What can the fields of education and health contribute to our understanding of the structural inequalities which children experience?
Poverty & Children arts exhibition and virtual arts exhibition –
Next, the programme’s children’s arts exhibition was developed, together with a ‘virtual arts exhibition’, and related participant workshops. These events were subsequently challenged by the overall question of
How can services in Scotland help mitigate the effects of poverty on children and families?
The arts exhibition aimed through presenting children’s own ideas, artefacts and voices to raise awareness of children’s experiences of poverty and their views on inequality in Scotland and beyond. The exhibition attracted wide interest in Glasgow and further afield and received over 2,500 visitors over two weeks.
A digital version of the exhibition is available.
Poverty as a human rights issue –
Third, viewing poverty as a human rights issue Poverty & Children programme participants – including children and young people, speakers, and workshop presenters explored questions of rights, social participation and ways of increasing children’s voice in the debate, including in and through the arts and alternative forms of expression. Viewing poverty as a human rights issue prompted the following questions:
How is the children’s rights agenda relevant to the issues of inequality?
What can services do to help tackling social inequalities, especially in a climate of austerity?
How does poverty impact on children’s access to services, social participation and opportunities for civic engagement?
How can research with children and young people contribute to our understanding of the structural inequalities which they experience?
FURTHER READING – AND WATCHING
- All Poverty & Children programme materials, including four policy briefings, Vimeo video, programme final report and other outputs, are now available at:
https://www.scottishinsight.ac.uk/Programmes/ViewProgramme/tabid/5828/pid/29/rdid/5827/Default.aspx
- A video presentation on the exhibition in the form of a virtual arts exhibition can be accessed online via the link.
Written by Prof Joan Forbes, for Challenge Poverty Week, October 2018