Special Report: Kiwi kids' real world hunger games

Child poverty is now an election issue. PHOTOS/FILE

The 1982 level of child poverty was 14 per cent. Since then, it's doubled, according to the 2013 Child Poverty Monitor, with one in four children now living in poverty. Today, child poverty is embedded in our vernacular with almost 280,000 children impoverished - that's something like the population of Hamilton and Dunedin combined.

Sixty-three per cent of poverty-stricken children are to be found in beneficiary households; 53 per cent in single parent families. One in six European children live in poverty with Maori and Pasifika twice as likely to be so affected.

If it sounds like child poverty is a new buzzword, the concept has 20 years behind it: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child called for government to enforce the wellbeing of children in 1993; Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) was formed the next year. It's not as if all parties have jumped on the child poverty bandwagon either, several parties likely to form this year's parliament have no child poverty policy whatsoever.

Mind watching the kids?

The last election saw Bryan Bruce's documentary Inside Child Poverty make ripples when it was aired in September 2011, with Phil Goff claiming Labour's policies were "almost a blueprint" of the changes called for in the film.

Bryan Bruce, above right, made a documentary about child poverty in New Zealand.

CPAG says child poverty has become this election's number one issue, the topic coming into focus in 2013 with the publication of Inequality: a New Zealand Crisis. It says there has been "a noticeable shift in public mood about child poverty, from denial and even ridicule a decade ago, to widespread acceptance and concern about its consequences."

The CPAG plan to rescue children concentrates on parents - because it feels when they are denied the In Work Tax Credit (Working for Families) their children miss out. The organisation claimed unsuccessfully in the Court of Appeal that the IWTC was discriminatory as incentivising work for sole parents did harm to children.

Caught in the middle

Child poverty is being used as ammunition by warring politicians.

In 2007, Mt Albert state house child Aroha Ireland, 12, was given attention by John Key. She linked National with the young and poor. Ireland bailed for Australia in 2012. This coincided with Jacinda Ardern's Child Poverty Reduction and Eradication Bill, introduced to parliament in October of that year. Then, the 2013 Household Incomes Report was interpreted by the opposition as showing that numbers of children living in severe poverty had reached their highest ever.

The HIR/Household Economic Survey also showed New Zealand is in the middle of OECD and EU rankings for child poverty rates.

Last year's Budget had a "work-first ideology", which perpetuated "financial sanctions on beneficiary families" to create "an invisible underclass of children", CPAG said.

The University of Otago's Child Poverty Monitor report makes no mention of school lunches and breakfasts, but that hasn't stopped politicians becoming obsessed with the concept.

Hone Harawira's Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill had its first reading in May. It provides for state-funded breakfasts and lunches in decile 1-2 schools. CPAG has backed this, calling on decile 1-3 schools to be funded to provide breakfasts. Shirley Maihi, principal of Finlayson Park School, said it was about brain food. "It makes a huge difference to our students. Children simply cannot learn effectively if they are hungry. We've seen too many promising students fall behind, right from the beginning of their school days, trying to learn through a hungry haze."

Finlayson Park School doesn't receive funding for the breakfasts it provides every day.

Children Commissioner Russell Wills said his office had guidelines for running school breakfast programmes. There's no doubt minds need food but creating a "Poor Kids Breakfast Club", as Dr Wills called it, can do harm. "They can create dependency and stigma. We need to design programmes so that neither of those outcomes occurs."

If school breakfast programmes are done right, parents will learn, too. Dr Wills said Wellesley Community Action had found the best way to work with Porirua schools. "They work with the dads to build gardens at the preschool, the mums learn how to plant, when to harvest and cook, they're also talking to preschool teachers, joining with kids, learning and developing language."

It doesn't mean the government foots the bill.

Professor Jonathan Boston of Victoria University has said eradicating child poverty through state spending is "too daunting for the government". Metiria Turei in July accused the prime minister of failing children after an extra 35,000 were categorised as impoverished. The Greens claim a Universal Child Benefit payment would cost $450 million. The cost of child poverty? Six billion a year. Dr Wills estimated child poverty costs up to 4 per cent of GDP .

Teachers say kids can't learn through a 'hunger haze'.

"Very poor children are more likely to be very ill or fail in school, leave without qualifications or go on to an adult life of low productivity and welfare dependency. These outcomes are preventable if we invest when children are very young."

Crisis? What crisis?

Our government does not measure child poverty; we don't even have an official poverty line. The statistics quantifying child poverty come from Otago's Child Poverty Monitor, compiled with the Children's Commissioner and J R McKenzie Trust.

The report is informed by the NZ Living Standards Survey which asks about restricted access to a number of things such as: friends, a waterproof coat, separate bed and/or bedrooms for separate children of the opposite sex, school uniform, doctor visits, prescriptions, school trips, cultural activities and sport, health problems, meals with meat, fruit and vegetables, internet and warmth.

Some of this year's election promises to reduce child poverty

National

Free doctors' visits and prescriptions for children under the age of 13.
Better protection of children using children's teams.
Boost paid parental leave by another four weeks to 18 weeks.
Spend an extra $155.7 million on ECE centres.
$33.2 million on eight new children's teams to work with at-risk children.
Screen people who work with children.

Labour

Jacinda Ardern's Child Poverty Reduction and Eradication Bill will measure child poverty before setting eradication targets.
Best Start package will provide $60 a week for most families.
Increase free ECE to 25 hours.
Fund 100 per cent qualified ECE teachers.

Greens

Universal Child Benefit, which can be capitalised for a home deposit.
Strengthen teen parenting programmes.
Eradicate school absenteeism.
Put youth voices into local governance.
Youth mental health initiatives.
Reduce suicide and drug abuse.
Alcohol health warnings.

NZ First

Clothing allowance for unsupported children.
Health screening of all children under 1 year.
Implementing recommendations of health select committee report on oral health; review state funding for teenagers' dental treatment.
Additional resourcing for child mental health services.

Maori Party

Eliminate child poverty by 2020.
Designate an official poverty line.
Extend the in-work tax payment to all families.
Investigate a Universal Child Benefit.
Establish a Neighbourhood Renewal.
Fund incentivising community gardens, afterschool care and post-natal support for parents.

United Future

Extend paid parental leave to 13 months.
One-stop shop family service centres providing services around health, relationships and WFF.
Safeguard children from harmful internet material.

Conservative

No published child poverty policy, but Colin Craig told a letter writer "the parent of a child is the party responsible to ensure that a child is fed" and if co-operation with school lunch programmes fails, "Then coercion may be necessary."

ACT

"The solution to child poverty lies with government doing less" because "most children in low income homes are brought up by loving and capable parents and do not need a solution".

MANA

Fund breakfasts in schools as well as free school healthcare

Internet Party

No published policy.