child poverty Essay

Submitted By oluseye4
Words: 2497
Pages: 10

This essay will critically discuss the current policies to promote the health and well-being need s of child in poverty and show the extent to which the policies meet their needs. Before that, the essay will define health and wellbeing in other to show the importance of health and well-being to children.
World Health Organisation (1946) defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well‐being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
And HM Government (2010) referred to well-being as a positive state of mind, feeling safe, and able to cope with a sense of connection with people, communities and the wider environment
Having considered the definition for both health and well-being, it can be understood there is a relationship between health and well-being as good health improves well-being and well-being improves health (Department of Health (DoH) 2014). . From the view of Schickler (2005) achieving health and well-being is vary. However well being has a wider meaning and more domains while health generally applied to the physical and sometimes mental domain but the two are interrelated
For instance, Department of Health suggested that there is evidence that happiness is linked to the physiological processes which affect health. For example, wellbeing can be a predictor of problems with inflammation and associated with immune systems’ health. Negative feelings can hinder cardiovascular, immune and endocrine systems
Because they perceived being health from the same way. And from this view, a child cannot be health if such is in a state where the parent is in poverty which is a greatest threat to the well-being of children and family (Barnado’s 2014). And a positive sense of well-being enables individual to be able to function in society and meet the demand of everyday (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence 2008). Poverty can be defined as relative and absolute. Relative poverty referred to the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others and absolute poverty is the lack of basic human needs including clean water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter (Acheson 1998). Nonetheless, John Rowntree Foundation (2013), associates poverty to being unable to meet minimum needs including food clothing and home as well as the opportunities that allow for a level of meaningful participation in society.
The rationale for choosing child poverty was based on increase rate of child poverty despite all effort to reduce it. According to The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC 2014), 39 per cent of UK children experienced poverty based on their family income at some point during their first five years of life, despite efforts to eradicate child poverty, research based on the Millennium Cohort Study. Similarly, child poverty facts and figures (2013) shows that about 3.5 million children are living in poverty in UK and these indicates that more than one in four children lives in UK .
Barnados (2014) adds that 1.6 million of these children live in severe poverty the UK in which 63% of children living in poverty are in a family where someone works and Whitam (2012) professed that it may increase by 400,000 in the next coming year . people’s health are determined by numbers of factor which varies from where they live, the state of the environment, genetics, income and educational level (World Health Organisation (WHO)2014)
Low income is the primary indicator of poverty and this can include other resources such as access to decent housing, education, community amenities and social network and assets (JRF 2009) there are strong evidence that income and social status are linked to better health and the grater the gap between the richest and poorest people, the greatest differences in health (WHO 2014)
The report according to Acheson (1998) highlights that Risk factors that affect health occur throughout the life course, especially childhood is a critical and