Child poverty experts give warnings to council

TACKLING child poverty in Dumfries and Galloway is getting harder — and bigger interventions are needed to make a real difference — a leading organisation has warned.

Researchers from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation told councillors last week that poverty in the region is deepening, with more families falling further below the poverty line rather than hovering just beneath it.

Foundation representatives Carla Cebula, Annie McKenzie and Charlotte Gorman gave a sobering presentation last week, explaining that very deep poverty levels have been “creeping up” over the last 30 years, and that an average couple with two primary-age children in very deep poverty need £1160 a month more just to reach the poverty line.

By contrast, a family who are in poverty but not deep poverty need just £160 a month more to cross it.

With 23 percent of children in the region — around one in four — currently living in poverty, researchers said the scale of the challenge demands action at a local level.

For every job available in Dumfries and Galloway, there are seven people who want to work.

Policy and research adviser Annie said this “simply tells us that there are not enough suitable jobs for people.”

She added that nine in ten people in Dumfries and Galloway work in the local authority where they live; and three in ten who want to work in the region are parents.

The current childcare offer was “often inflexible for families,” started “too late for many people” and remained “unaffordable for families on a low income.”

On housing, researchers pointed to the rural nature of the region as making affordable homes especially critical.

Annie added that the concentration of second homes and holiday lets was contributing to rising prices and depopulation.

Meanwhile, locally-commissioned research has just been commissioned to be completed before Christmas, covering poverty trends in the region over a 15-year period.