Thread by @DrJinRussell

#Budget2022. A missed opportunity to reduce child poverty. The major investment in healthcare services needed to go hand in hand with efforts to reduce poverty.

Poverty is a major determinant of child health. Investing in one without the other is ambulance at the bottom stuff

Child health is exquisitely sensitive to child poverty. We can’t achieve child health and well-being without tackling child poverty. /2

https://twitter.com/drjinrussell/status/1526128801822158848

In terms of #Budget2022, if the government’s figures are taken at face value, one in ten children are in material hardship, and one in seven are in income poverty. Poverty rates for Māori and Pacific children are much higher, as well as for disabled children. /3

We are on track to completely fail to meet the government’s own child poverty targets, no matter which poverty measure is used. /4

Budget 2022 says that increases to WFF and main benefits are key actions to reduce child poverty BUT these have already been implemented, and announced a year ago, before the cost of living rose, before the economic and social crises of the pandemic started to have a bearing /5

In the room with the researchers from @childpovertynz, looking at Budget 2022, my mentor and colleague Prof Innes Asher looked at the little in it for children in poverty, and asked everyone at the table, “How long have we been doing this?” /6

That’s the feeling. Just over 10 years since I woke up to child poverty, the Solutions to Child Poverty Report convened by then Children’s Commissioner Dr Russell Wills. I’m asking myself, when will help come for children in the deepest poverty? /7

I thought this historic majority government would be the one to bring the change

People will understandably want to know what we would have liked to have seen in Budget 2022. Here are the Fairer Future recommendations

https://twitter.com/actionstation/status/1527128403799085058