Keir Starmer promised to tackle child poverty – but we need action, not empty words

The UK is the sixth richest country in the world, yet one in three children here are living in poverty. 300,000 UK children were thrust into poverty at the height of the cost of living crisis, and child homelessness is currently at record levels. At the same time, record numbers of young people are seeking help for ‘mental health conditions’, with young people from socioeconomically deprived backgrounds more likely to experience a ‘probable mental disorder’. This is far from coincidence.

Although there has been a recent spotlight on the crisis of child poverty, the link between poverty and child ‘mental health problems’ is missing from public consciousness. Doesn’t it make sense that a child attending school with a hungry belly, precarious housing, whose parents are desperately searching food-banks for dinner – might feel depressed, find it hard to pay attention, want to hurt themselves, or even want to die?

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Devastatingly, these young people suffering in poverty are further inundated by the daily stressors of social media, witnessing multiple genocides, bullying, myths of meritocracy, racism and more. It is indisputable that a child’s emotional and psychological experiences are shaped by the world we live in, and inextricably linked to social inequity and injustice.

A cultural shift is gravely needed in the way we understand children’s mental health. Astronomically rising rates of child poverty are a product of political choices, therefore different political choices could bring about the resources children need – dramatically improving their mental health. With a new government in the steering seat, it is an urgent and necessary time to acknowledge the politics of children’s mental health.

This is especially important, as the UK’s pervasive and popularised ‘mental health’ discourse is completely depoliticised. We are told that a child’s emotional difficulties are predetermined in some way by the child’s ‘nature’, brain, thinking-style or perhaps, even their parents are to blame. Children are being disproportionately mislabelled with psychiatric disorders, locating the problem within the child, without acknowledging the detrimental impact of poverty and state violence on their minds, spirits and bodies. This harmful, hyper-individualised way of understanding suffering unintentionally blames the child and family, obscuring the conditions of deprivation around a child that are the root cause of the problem.

As a psychologist working with young people and families, I’ve witnessed the intricate ways poverty impacts relationships and children’s psychological worlds. Poverty reduces emotional bandwidth in families, heightening the risk of domestic abuse and negatively impacting parenting behaviours. Furthermore, there is a grievous emotional toll on young people surviving hunger, cold and precarious housing conditions often with no private space. Recent global research indicates that housing instability and regular relocating, caused disrupted connections and loss of social capital for young people.

Destitution seeds shame, low self-esteem, isolation and pushes children to spend more time online, with less access to travel and other resources that might offer a therapeutic connection. Child poverty is also racialised — Pakistani and Bangladeshi kids being most affected, as systemic inequalities worsen poverty. Children in poverty are more vulnerable to grooming, and may even turn to theft or other criminalised behaviours to obtain the resources they need. Heartbreakingly, these children are then punished for being in the positions we put them in, through prison, school exclusions and other violent arms of the state.

What is undeniably clear, is that mental health is an issue of social ills rather than individual ills or deficiencies. What else will wake us up to this reality, if not the extreme distress of young children living in poverty?

Several community organisations and charities have been helping re-establish this link in public consciousness, such as Impact on Urban Health. They recognise that children in poverty are victims of organised abandonment by the state, therefore investing in structural interventions towards futures free of deprivation, neglect and violence.

Starmer’s Labour recently made promises to tackle child poverty, allocating a taskforce to “drive numbers down”. Of course this commitment is welcome, but there is an urgent need for demonstrative action, rather than empty words. Child poverty is preventable and easy to end, and governmental decisions focused on ending poverty would be a highly effective therapeutic intervention to the mental health crisis. Political (and simultaneously psychological) preventative interventions could include immediately lifting the two-child universal credit limit, greater access to free school meals, affordable housing, offering young people free access to transport, implementing a ‘child lock’ – which ensures financial support for children becomes a fixed commitment rather than being subject to the whim of economic or political decisions.

State support would be a lifeline, reducing severe hardship and psychological distress in children and families. It would offer the resources and care needed to nurture bodies and relationships, and live safe, sheltered, stable, connected and mentally healthy lives. Financial and social support makes room for the possibilities of rest and joy, which every single one of us need to face another day. With a new government driving us forward, we can end not only child poverty, but also disrupt the inextricably linked crisis of children’s emotional distress.

Sanah Ahsan is a liberation psychologist, writer and educator. She is also a partner with Impact on Urban Health, a charity affiliated with Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust, dedicated to tackling health inequalities in urban areas.

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