Initiative launched to combat child poverty

Thousands of children are being denied their constitutional right because the State fails to provide them with a home environment that enables them to fully participate in school, a campaign being launched tomorrow will say.

The Open Your Eyes To Child Poverty initiative is an interagency campaign aimed at raising public awareness of child poverty and hopes to highlight the difficulties encountered by the children of homeless parents living in temporary accommodation.

The unstable home life experienced by children living in B & B's, hostels or other emergency accommodation denies them full access to education, says Focus Ireland, one of the charities in the initiative.

Mr Declan Jones, chief executive of Focus Ireland, said temporary accommodation was a totally inadequate backdrop for any child as they prepared to return to school. He will call for the immediate development of a plan to provide quality emergency and transitional accommodation for families with children.

The number of homeless families has increased dramatically in the past 17 years. In Dublin in 1983 there were 39 women with 93 children in emergency accommodation. That figure had risen to 540 families with 990 children in emergency accommodation last year, 430 of which were headed by lone parents. Focus Ireland's services co-ordinator, Ms Orla Barry, says children in these living conditions are experiencing an acute form of educational disadvantage. "They are expected to prepare for a new school term with no proper home to return to each day." She points to the often cramped conditions and absence of any privacy for such children to "do the basic things like study, read, think and do their homework".

Figures from last year's ESRI Counted In report indicate that there were 796 homeless households of more than one person throughout the State on March 31st, 1999. That figure is likely to have increased since then, says Mr Damien Drumm, housing officer with Dublin Corporation.

The corporation, like other local authorities, awards extra "points" to families on the housing waiting list but says the number of people seeking local authority housing has increased while the number of local authority-owned houses or flats becoming available has decreased over the past three years.

In 1997 there were 1,032 "casual vacancies", that is, a tenant for whatever reason gives their house or flat back to the local authority. There were only 707 last year. Mr Drumm attributes this in part to the fact that fewer corporation tenants are buying their own homes and are remaining in the public rented sector.

Focus Ireland is one of the eight charities in the Open Your Eyes To Child Poverty initiative, with Barnardos; the Combat Poverty Agency; Children's Rights Alliance; the National Youth Council of Ireland; Pavee Point; People With Disabilities in Ireland; and the Society of St Vincent de Paul also taking part.