Awareness week highlights child poverty in The Netherlands

‘The Week against Poverty’ is this week (14 to 18 October) highlighting the importance of recognising and tackling poverty – not least affected children – in The Netherlands.

Making poverty more visible and emphasising the importance of working together is vital, according to Ellen Donkers, of the Netherlands Youth Institute (Nederlands Jeugdinstituut – NJi).

The NJi  is a national knowledge centre that collates, enriches, interprets and shares current knowledge about growing up. It says it is dedicated to ‘ bringing knowledge to attention and helping to apply that knowledge’.

‘We know that poverty can have major consequences for children’, says Ellen Donkers.

“It makes their world smaller. They go from home to school and back again, while other children play sports or go to the museum or the cinema. Parents in poverty often have stress about what they can and cannot afford and children feel that. This can affect their behaviour, school performance and even their health. The fact that they do much less in their free time and experience stress also means that they have fewer opportunities.”

It was only two months ago that the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) said that without sufficient interventions, child poverty – kinderarmoede – was likely to increase from 4.7 per cent this year to 4.9 per cent by 2028. Although it acknowledges child poverty has fallen faster than general poverty in recent years, new measures are urgently needed to help vulnerable families.

It is vital, therefore, says Ellen Donkers, that professionals recognise families living in poverty and know what to do to help them.

“Do you suspect that a family cannot make ends meet? Then try to talk to the parents about financial worries and see who you can refer them to. You cannot tackle poverty alone. For example, if you are a teacher and see that parents have financial worries, you can do your best for your student. But you also need other parties to help, such as the municipality and local funds. For example, to arrange a bicycle or a laptop.”