Overview

Overview:

QUB Supervisors: Dr. Mary-Louise Corr and Dr. Catherine McNamee

Project Partner: Save the Children UK

Background:

Under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989), every child has the right to an adequate standard of living and Article 27 states that States Parties shall take appropriate measures to assist parents and others responsible for children to implement this right, particularly with regard to nutrition, clothing and housing. However, this right is not implemented fully in the UK with three in ten children experiencing poverty and one million children experiencing destitution in 2022. In Northern Ireland, the recent Child Poverty Strategy, concluded in 2022, failed to ‘turn the curve’ and reduce numbers of children living in poverty, impacting on health, educational and wellbeing outcomes.

Despite their vulnerability to the impact of poverty and social security policies, children’s voices are absent from debate and there is a lack of research with children on child poverty (Shier, 2023). As such, measures of child poverty and social security policies designed to tackle poverty are developed without an understanding of children’s views and experiences.

Project Overview:

The research will form part of an ongoing collaboration between the Centre for Children’s Rights (QUB), Save the Children UK and Ulster University which focuses on developing methodological approaches to participatory research with children on poverty. This project aims to understand poverty from children’s own perspectives. Children’s views and experiences of an adequate standard of living will be used to create a new measure of child poverty, enabling policymakers to develop more effective and equitable policies grounded in children’s views and experiences of poverty.

Research Aims:

• To capture detailed accounts of children’s experiences of poverty in Northern Ireland, with a particular focus on the impact of social security policies

• To use children’s accounts to develop and test a child-led measure of poverty based on children’s views of what constitutes an adequate standard of living for children in the UK. 

Methods:

The project will be underpinned by a child-rights based approach (Lundy & McEvoy, 2012). It is envisaged it will consist of 3 key strands: work with a children’s advisory group to inform the study design, development of research instruments and analysis and interpretation of data; in-depth accounts with up to 30 children capturing their experiences of poverty and impacts of social security policies on their ability to enjoy an adequate standard of living; and, develop and test a new measure of child poverty.