Now a Cabinet committee paper reveals Upston has proposed a shake-up of a different supplementary child poverty measure — called the Child Poverty Related Indicators (CPRIs).
Professor Jonathan Boston, a child poverty expert who co-chaired a child poverty expert advisory group and assisted officials in drafting the Child Poverty Reduction Bill, read the Cabinet committee paper and said the minister’s proposals were “concerning”.
Upston stressed the Government was “fully committed” to reducing child poverty and she was reviewing the CPRIs as was required under legislation.
Under the legislation, Upston is required to set at least one CPRI. There are currently five (set by the previous Government) — housing affordability, housing quality, food insecurity, regular school attendance and potentially avoidable hospitalisations.
In the Cabinet committee paper, Upston says she intends to change the CPRIs to align them with the Government’s wider targets.
“We want to focus on practical and measurable things that will shift the dial and help us meet our targets of increasing student attendance, more students at expected curriculum levels, reducing child and youth offending, fewer people in emergency housing, and fewer people on the Jobseeker Support Benefit, including fewer children in benefit-dependent homes,” she said.
Upston said her focus will be on employment in reducing child poverty. She told the Herald no decisions on the final CPRIs had been made by Cabinet but these would be released before the end of the year.
Child Poverty Reduction Minister Louise Upston. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Boston says metrics such as emergency housing and Jobseeker beneficiary numbers were not appropriate measures of child poverty.
“The proposed measure [of people in emergency housing] captures only a tiny fraction of the population and is not specifically focused on children.
Boston said the two existing housing measures (unaffordable and poor quality housing) were focused on children and provided “highly relevant” information about a key driver of childhood poverty that can exacerbate life-long poverty due to greater ill-health, lower educational attainment, lower income and constrained financial resources.
“With respect to fewer people on Jobseeker Support Benefit, again, this is not a measure of the drivers of childhood poverty. The appropriate measure is the number of children in benefit-dependent households.
“That said, if we are concerned about the drivers of childhood poverty, we should also be asking whether families with children are receiving all the public support to which they are entitled.”
Boston said such matters rarely seemed to be given the proper attention by policy-makers.
“It is hard not to conclude that the Government is proposing to replace all the existing CPRIs, not because it is genuinely interested in reducing childhood poverty — or poverty more generally — but simply because it is determined, as in many other areas of public policy, to take a different approach to the previous Government.
“I see no value in such a strategy. It does not serve the common good or the public interest. Nor does it help our most deprived and needy children. It is simply cheap politics.”
In a statement, Upston said as the Child Poverty Reduction Minister she was required to review the CPRIs every three years — and was doing so as part of wider refresh of the Child and Youth Strategy.
“The Government is fully committed to reducing child poverty. Our investments in Budget 2024 are estimated to lift around 17,000 children out of poverty on the ‘after housing costs’ primary measure by 2026/27.”
‘Leaves children no better off’
Green Party Social Development and Employment spokesman Ricardo Menéndez March was concerned the minister would replace the CPRIs with weaker measures and urged her to focus on the “bare minimum” before considering any additional or new measurements.
Green Party Social Development and Employment spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez March. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
“We are warning the minister against not taking action to ensure that children have enough to make ends meet and call for her to drop any work to add further targets if she’s not even going to commit to the bare minimum,” he said.
“Our key message to the minister is that she needs to put her focus on addressing material hardship and to weaken her targets when it comes to whether children have enough to live on while then moving on to explore what other things she wants to measure leaves children no better off.”
A child is experiencing material hardship if their household does not have six or more basic needs such as the ability to afford fresh fruit and vegetables or the ability to regularly see a doctor.
