The leaving charity head criticizes Social media firms and Tory’s failings, saying that child poverty has gotten much worse.
When the Conservatives were in power, “pretty much every indicator” went in the wrong direction, according to the head of the top children’s charity in the UK, who has criticized the party for failing to improve child outcomes.
Child poverty has significantly worsened. Although spending on children has increased, a growing portion of that spending has gone toward failure rather than prevention and early intervention, he said. Despite a 28% increase in the number of children placed in care, resources to assist early intervention have decreased 44% since 2010.
Wanless also criticized the “morally repugnant” refusal of successive governments to outlaw slapping in England, as it is in 67 other countries, and chimed in on proposals to prevent children from using social media, as Australia intends to do. Wanless also lambasted social media corporations for putting money ahead of people.
In response to certain activists calling for a social media ban, he stated that although he wasn’t “indifferent” to the risks that exist online, he believed that a complete ban on social media might be more detrimental than beneficial. Additionally, Wanless was a harsh critic of the social media behemoth Meta, accusing it of being “in denial” following the death of a 14-year-old girl who committed herself after viewing graphic images on Instagram. Wanless claimed that Meta and other digital companies put money before anything else.
According to Meta, it has introduced more than fifty measures to enhance child safety, such as teen accounts and “research-backed” alerts that appear when someone searches for terms associated with suicide or self-harm. However, a sobering study published this weekend by the Observer calls into question Meta’s assertion that it has greatly improved its moderating, revealing that Instagram is still unable to eliminate graphic self-harm content, with experts calling its procedures “extremely inadequate.”
Child poverty: what is it?
Poverty, which is commonly defined as “pronounced deprivation in well-being,” is most commonly quantified in monetary terms, meaning that households must have insufficient income to buy the bare necessities for survival and well-being. If a child lives in a household whose consumption is below this level, they are classified as poor.
Each country has a different threshold based on a variety of factors, including the cost of commodities and living standards. The many facets of poverty are particularly significant for children because early deprivation harms communities and societies by putting them at a disadvantage throughout their lives, affecting their health and abilities, making them more susceptible to exploitation and abuse, and limiting their future opportunities.
How many children are living in poverty?
As of 2022, 333 million children were living in extreme poverty, barely making ends meet on less than PPP $2.15 a day. Children are particularly affected; although they only make up 31% of the world’s population, they account for more than half of the world’s impoverished.
It is predicted that 1 billion children are multidimensionally poor (as of 2019), which means they experience at least one significant deprivation in the areas of water, sanitation, nutrition, housing, or health. An additional 100 million children were forced into multidimensional poverty as a result of COVID-19. As of 2018, approximately one in seven children in OECD nations live below the poverty line.
Where is the prevalence of child poverty highest?
Both the highest percentage of children in extreme poverty (40 percent) and the biggest proportion of children in extreme poverty worldwide (71.1 percent) are found in Sub-Saharan Africa. With 18.6% of all children worldwide living in extreme poverty, South Asia has the second-highest percentage of children in this category.
Does a global coalition aid in the eradication of child poverty?
The Global Coalition to End Child Poverty was started by a group of organizations that share a common goal and emphasis on child poverty, and it was co-convened by UNICEF and Save the Children. Raising awareness of children living in poverty worldwide and promoting national and international efforts to reduce it are the main goals of the coalition’s activity.