CYP 3 Essays

Submitted By rekha81
Words: 2884
Pages: 12

Knowledge assessment task
1.2/1.2/1.3/:
1. Design and produce an illustrated poster to describe how social, economic (including poverty) and cultural factors can affect a child’s development.
Influences that might affect children and young people.
2. Write a report to explain the impact of poverty and how children and young people’s personal choices and experiences can affect their outcomes and life chances.

Poverty can be thought of many ways. From a young age being educated in compulsory education we are taught of poverty in the third world. We witnessed images of people living in overcrowded shanty towns, children being deprived of education because their parents could not afford it, and sadly children dying of long term illnesses when in some parts of the world it is treated and cured with basic medicine, again simply because the families cannot afford it.
However, when attention is taken elsewhere, we cannot hide the fact that poverty also exists closer to home. Yes in the UK recent studies show that at least one in six children live in relative poverty and one in five live in absolute poverty (department of work and pensions). To measure relative poverty the government define it as when families have a net income that is below 60% of ‘median net disposal income’.
The impacts of poverty on children and their outcomes are huge.
Children living in poverty are twice as more likely to live in bad conditioned overcrowded housing. This has proven to have significant effects on their health and general well-being; as houses may have moulding walls which is a risk to health to live in damp conditions. Some families may not be able to afford to rent a house of their own so they’ll choose the option of sharing with others. So children won’t have their own free space, they will be constricted to how much space they are allowed to use and when. Because of the lack of space these children have they are unable to invite friends round for tea or parties, so they miss out on the normal childhood social activities that most children do. This has a detrimental effect on their social development, as they feel unequal to their peers.
All though the government is building estate play areas for the children to spend their recreational time in, majority of the times unfortunately these playgrounds will be vandalised, older youth will use it as a place to deal drugs, making it unsafe for children to fully enjoy themselves in.
Children that are in poverty are more likely to suffer from ill health. This is because of the diet that they consume. Families will struggle between paying bills and purchasing good nourishing ingredients to cook homemade foods, so instead they will opt for fast-food which is cheaper than buying whole ingredients. Fast food lacks the nutrients that’s needed for a healthy lifestyle, having high levels of salt and fat children are at a high risk to suffer. Studies have shown that poorer children are more likely to be obese because of the high intake of fast food.
Unfortunately parents that are alcohol and drug addicts have most of their money spent on their addictions leaving the children in dire need of basic needs. Children then have to deal with the consequences by being put in care; either with a foster family, in a residential care home, or residential schools.
Not having the extra income to send children for extracurricular activities may mean that children to not get the full advantage of developing to their utmost ability, because of the lack of space, stimulation and services.
This leads us with the influences that affect a child’s personal choices by their experiences at hand, and the overall outcome these choices may have.
We know that a child looks up to the adults around them. They want to be just like them, copying their speech and their actions; their mannerism’s. If a child is surrounded by adults that are lost in their addiction of alcohol