The Big Question

Is the government doing enough for the poorest children?

Eve Rank
Parents with learning difficulties are often poor and so are their children. I know parents who had a good service to start off with but the support they were promised is taken away. Social services only come back where there is a crisis and then it is to take children away. Services like Sure Start should be available to everyone everywhere.

Len Smith – Gypsy activist
It could ensure that benefits are better targeted. I’ve long felt it wrong that high-income families can receive the same family allowance as the poorest. While it could be argued that high earners pay more into the system, it seems that benefits should lift the poorest to a better standard of life, paid for by those who can best afford it through taxation.

Kerry Evans – Parent of two autistic sons
It is laudable that the government should have a target for erasing child poverty. But the overall tax burden and cost of living for families with one wage earner or those caring for the disabled means there is hidden poverty. The government should look at the high cost of living and its implications for all families.

Kierra Box – Young people’s activist
The government isn’t doing anything. It’s privatising schooling and it’s privatising opportunity if the “opportunity cards” mooted in the youth green paper are to go by. And it is handing the destiny of children over to “parent power”, a middle-class phenomenon which means that the children of poor parents will continue to go to crap schools.