Poverty is about more than a lack of income. Children growing up in poverty are more vulnerable than their peers to a wide range of negative outcomes. This represents a huge injustice and waste of human potential.
Evidence shows that growing up in poverty can have a profound and lasting impact on children’s outcomes – income poverty and material deprivation are strongly associated with poorer outcomes for children. This is not simply an issue of exclusion experienced as a direct result of lack of material resources, but with a range of interconnected issues, such as stress and poor health.
Evidence tells us the that factors such as the quality of a child’s home learning environment and their family relationships have a strong and direct impact on their later life chances. With many of these factors are strongly associated with poverty, income poverty is not insuperable and many children from deprived background go on to have positive futures. This is why we are aiming on children’s outcomes. Our ultimate aim is to break inter-generational cycles of poverty, inequality and deprivation by improving the circumstances in which children grew up – the particular importance of improving children’s outcomes in the early years.
