Poverty & Keeping Children Safe - In conversation with Professor Brigid Featherstone, UK

This Anti-Poverty Week looks at how poverty impacts the opportunities and outcomes of children and young people. We know that poverty affects far too many Australian children and families, diminishing their lives now and in the future. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it’s just not right that 1 in 6 of our children grow up in poverty.

In this conversation we have Professor Brigid Featherstone, from the University of Huddersfield, UK talking about groundbreaking research from the UK and other countries that shows how poverty and inequality impact the context in which child abuse and neglect occurs and how it is responded to by different systems, including those that are meant to be providing families with support.

What can we learn from the UK and other countries, to help every child in every community have a fair go?

Many studies have found that poverty and inequality is a large contributory factor to children being in contact with the child protection system. Professor Featherstone and colleagues say that ‘crucially many of the issues that are dealt with as individualised issues in child protection such as mental health difficulties, substance misuse difficulties and drug and alcohol problems are all much more prevalent in unequal societies. However, such socially generated issues are dealt with within an individual frame in child protection. They are reduced to issues of choice, motivation or character, which is an inadequate frame.’