A message about child poverty from a Scotsman reader 150 years ago that still applies today
in 1875, in a letter to The Scotsman, James Gowans wrote ‘I went over and saw a crowd of these children... From their starved appearance, the first duty is to feed them’
Exactly 150 years ago, The Scotsman’s letter pages were ablaze with ferocious but terribly genteel debate. The courteous ding-dong spanned most of 1875, as gentlemen correspondents – and they were all gentlemen – debated the morality and merit of giving free broth and bread to 800 “poor neglected children” at an emergency shelter in Canongate.
An appeal to Edinburgh’s “charitable spirits and kindly hearts” for donations had provoked some readers to question the wisdom of such charity. “A poor neglected ill-fed child getting a dinner daily is getting a daily lesson in easy pauperism,” suggested one.
Even the testimony of a senior police officer enlisted to investigate the children’s background – “I can truly say their homes are a melancholy sight. The misery and wretchedness is beyond description” – failed to convince the sceptics.
‘No use theorising’
Finally, James Gowans, of Randolph Crescent, a reader of independent spirit, had enough and looked for himself: “Having a few minutes to spare today, I went over and saw a crowd of these children. In their presence, it is of no use theorising. From their starved appearance, the first duty is to feed them. There they are, the sight of them at once suggesting action.”
Well, we’re with Mr Gowans, then and now, and, after 150 years of theorising, the sight of our poorest children is still suggesting action – the most urgent and effective action possible.
Sadly, shamefully, there could easily be 800 young people still going hungry in the capital tonight, as Aberlour Children’s Charity marks our 150th anniversary. Personally, it will be a night of mixed emotions with my pride in our charity’s achievements tempered by frustration that so much will remain to be done when I stand down as chief executive later this year.
The lives of our poorest children might be a little better after 150 years but, surely, by now, they should have been transformed? Certainly, since I began working to support families 35 years ago, the change has been incremental, the advances painstaking.
That begs an obvious but difficult and necessary question for all of us working to ease the impact of poverty on young lives. If, after 150 years, we have failed to significantly ease, never mind end, child poverty, perhaps it is time to ask if we are doing it wrong?
Importance of education
Given the growth in our public sector over eight decades and the growth of services aimed at easing poverty, we would have expected some significant inroads, real measurable improvement in the number of families affected, in education, in health. That has not happened.
Real, lasting change, change that sticks and persists through generations, is about children engaging in education, securing better outcomes in school and wider opportunities when they leave, and closing the attainment gap.
That does not begin in school, however, but at home, in helping families live off an adequate income and reducing stress and uncertainty in their homes and the chaos it often provokes. That is when education and health outcomes start to improve. That is when the change becomes systemic, built on stone not sand, and the lines on the graph tilt, irrevocably, upwards. We should be aiming to steer families on the brink of crisis to that safe haven, a place beyond poverty.
Relentless, clear-eyed focus
But what must change if, despite all the resources, strategies, and support, children are not already being helped there and helped to stay there? The easy answer is more resources or greater benefits but a better, more useful answer is about stress-testing the money already being spent to tackle what is, beyond all doubt, a national emergency.
Every pound must be spent with most intent and maximum impact, with a relentless, clear-eyed focus on what really helps families most, right now and in the future.
Too much time, energy and resources are spent managing, not ending, poverty, keeping crisis from the door of one family today and tomorrow but not preventing its return next week, next year or for the next generations.
All of us involved in this work must be more flexible and cooperative and less precious and territorial even if that means people are doing different jobs with different priorities. Across the public sector, trade unions must be front, centre and fully engaged in that process and convinced by its ambition and potential.
It will mean more collaboration, less competition, and the breaking down of barriers between local and national government, charities and health boards. It will mean encouraging the swapping of skills, experience, resources, and personnel from public sector to third sector and back again.
It will mean fundamental change in what we do and how we do it. It will mean decision-makers in our public sector shaking off the psychological legacy of austerity and focussing not on lines on a budget but their potential impact on communities for generations to come, on making good investments and not easy short-term cuts that will cost much, much more down the line.
Listening to the evidence
We need to get the right people around the table, including, importantly, the families affected, and begin an honest conversation about what we have been doing and why. What is achieving the best outcomes for families and children? What are we doing that does not just ease the threat of imminent crisis but lifts families out of poverty and keeps them out? Above all else, how can we do more of it?
That conversation will depend, most of all, on good faith assessment of our work, of being led by the evidence and steered by what we know can deliver enduring change for families and their communities. We can build on that but must do so swiftly.
It is the same urgent ambition that James Gowans appealed for in his call for action on these pages 150 years ago. It is beyond time for Scotland to show it.
SallyAnn Kelly OBE is chief executive of Aberlour Children’s Charity
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