'Parents struggling to feed children': Calls for more supports as Barnardos outline impacts of poverty in Cork city

A Cork project leader at Barnardos children’s charity has called for targeted supports to be put in place to help lift children out of poverty, as she says the need for their service is increasing.

The latest poverty statistics published on Thursday by the CSO show that the number of children at risk of poverty nationally increased from 15.3% to 17.2%, and the number of children experiencing consistent poverty increased substantially from 4.8% to 8.5%.

Barnardos says the figures would have been significantly higher had it not been for the cost-of-living measures which the Government has stated they will not be repeating this year.

Project leader for south Cork city Barnardos, Aoife Farrell, told The Echo that these statistics mirror what they are seeing on the ground: “We really dread to think how families living in poverty will be impacted when these measures are reduced or ceased altogether.”

Ms Farrell, who leads a service based in Mahon which covers areas across the southside of Cork city and suburbs, explained that basic needs are not being met: “We would have a real concern as to how these early experiences of not having enough food, living in unsuitable or unsafe housing will affect children later on in life.”

She said they have seen an increase in need for their support, and an increasing level of complexity in Cork — children who are living in poverty but also impacted by other types of adversity including parental mental health issues, domestic violence, substance misuse, and unsafe communities or neighbourhoods.

“Poverty in terms of housing, food, clothing, is often coupled with another type of trauma — we have to help meet the children’s basic needs first, we often come into homes and find there is insufficient heating.”

Supports such as hot school meals have made a huge difference, she said, “but then we have to think about the conditions a child is going home to”.

HOLIDAYS

She added that the Easter holidays can be a difficult period: “It can be a really challenging time for single-parent households where the parent is working and facing challenges in terms of childcare, and it’s difficult for families living in poverty to provide social opportunities.”

CSO figures showed that children living in one-parent families were almost twice as likely to be in consistent poverty.

Barnardos supports include its food bank in Mahon, home visits, and supplying decent shoes and coats, to things like helping a “particularly isolated” child get enrolled in Irish dancing or GAA.

She said: “That typical childhood experience is not accessible to some families, and those who are also disadvantaged in other ways as well as poverty, like families living in direct provision, can find it very challenging.

“We help to provide outings, nothing extravagant, but the children say that when they go back to school they have news for their friends and teachers when they ask what they did over the holidays.

“The child could be sitting in a classroom where it seems like all the others have gone on holiday or done a camp, and they can feel the same as the child sitting to their left or right because they went to the beach — it makes a huge difference.”

Long-term supports should be prioritised over one-off measures, Ms Farrell said: “Children living in our communities are living in consistent poverty.

“Their parents are struggling to heat the home, feed their children and give them the childhood they want to — the Government has to prioritise targeted supports, things like expanding the fuel allowance, increasing thresholds for social welfare.

“Childhood lasts a lifetime, and if children are going without essentials and experiencing multiple layers of disadvantage early in life, it’s going to have a huge knock-on effect as they become an adolescent and an adult.”