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Prince William’s Fight Against Homelessness

Fight Against HomelessnessIn the United Kingdom (U.K.), eight in 10 people think homelessness is a serious issue in the country. A study by Shelter shows that at least 270,000 people are reportedly homeless in the U.K., with 123,000 being children. Engaging in the fight against homelessness is Prince William, who has recently launched Homewards, a new project that aims to eradicate homelessness in the U.K.

Types of Homelessness in the UK

  • Rough Sleeping: Rough sleeping includes sleeping outside or in places that are not ideal for sleeping, such as in a car or an abandoned building. It is the most visible and dangerous form of homelessness, leading to instances of violence and challenges to mental and physical health, trauma and substance abuse.
  • Temporary Accommodation: When necessary, people can stay in temporary accommodation for a period of time, ranging from one night to several years. There are many different types of accommodation, including hostels, winter shelters and women’s housing, each accommodation with its own set of rules and accommodation options.
  • Statutory Homelessness: To be legally classified as homeless, a person must either lack a secure place to live or face unreasonable conditions that make it difficult to stay there. The Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, Housing Act 1996 and the Homelessness Act 2002 have established statutory obligations on local housing authorities to provide assistance for individuals who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
  • Hidden Homelessness: Those who have no entitlements to aid with housing or who choose not to ask their council for help sometimes choose to stay in temporary accommodation, and as a result, homelessness statistics often do not account for them.

Homelessness in the UK

There are several causes of homelessness, ranging from social reasons, such as unaffordable rent and unemployment, to circumstances like leaving prison or care with no home to return to forcing people into being homeless. Women in particular can find themselves homeless after escaping physically abusive relationships.

Homelessness can have a severe effect on both physical and mental health. Not only is the average death rate for people experiencing homelessness 46% for men and 42% for women, but homeless people are also nine times more likely to take their own life than the general population. Homelessness also increases the risk of violence — more than one in three homeless people who are rough sleeping are deliberately kicked or hit. Seven in 10 people believe society should pay more attention to homelessness, and six in 10 believe there are several ways in which people can contribute to the fight against homelessness.

Homewards

Prince William and The Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales have recently launched Homewards: a locally led, five-year program aiming to end homelessness by forming local coalitions of committed people, organizations and businesses. Six flagship locations across the UK will be supported by Homewards in this endeavor: Aberdeen, Sheffield, Newport, Lambeth, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Northern Ireland.

The support provided includes up to £500,000 of flexible funding, a local lead to drive action and, finally, a research partner to evaluate success.

Prince William said that he “first visited a homelessness shelter when [he] was eleven, with [his] mother,” and that he has been inspired to follow in her footsteps, continuing the humanitarian work his mother started.

In 2009, Prince William also chose to spend a night sleeping in an alleyway under Blackfriars Bridge in below-freezing conditions, with his only companions being his private secretary and Seyi Obakin, the chief executive of British homeless charity Centrepoint. At the time, the Prince said he hoped that by “deepening [his] understanding of the issue,” he can “do [his] bit” to help fight homelessness.

Homewards is the first major project the Prince of Wales has launched since his father, King Charles III, ascended the throne. Prince William has described Homewards as his ‘lifelong mission.’ Hopefully, with Prince William leading this new initiative, the very serious issue of homelessness in the U.K. can draw more attention and encourage more help and financial aid in the fight against homelessness.

– Sheherazade Al Shahry
Photo: Unsplash

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The Power of Poverty-Fighting Poetry

poverty-fighting poetry
Poetry can offer a vision of a more just and fair world, a world which often runs contrary to conventional and established socioeconomic norms. For centuries, poets have used their pens to dispel myths and misconceptions about the poor with poverty-fighting poetry. Especially in the camp of written works, representations of poverty have caused a rift between poetry and the well-circulated novels and plays of renown authors and playwrights. The cryptic undertones of poetry force us to internalize and think about the hardships associated with poverty, while many novels and plays simply use poverty as a setting, or a stage on which authors and playwrights can effectively deploy their storylines.

Poverty-Fighting Poetry

Today, young people are harnessing the power of poetry to emphasize the burdens of poverty and to champion for a better world. Poetry competitions not only serve as a forum to advocate for change but as a means of giving back to the world’s most vulnerable communities.

Poetry at Menstrual Hygiene Day

In the United Kingdom, the Women and Girls organization launched a poetry competition for Menstrual Hygiene Day (May 28th) in which British youth were encouraged to write poems about period poverty. The goal of the organization and of the poetry competition is to expand access to sanitary protection and menstrual hygiene products for impoverished women in India. In many parts of South Asia, it is considered taboo to openly talk about menstruation and to even search for period products. This lack of understanding of the importance of female hygiene promotes the inability of women to care for themselves while on their periods, a plight commonly known as period poverty.

One of the judges of the competition, Perdita Cargill, thinks that poetry will help break down misunderstandings of menstruation and barriers to menstrual hygiene: “Let’s talk about periods and write poems about them and do whatever we can to help others get the fair access to sanitary protection they need for dignity and health.” Poverty-fighting poetry encompasses a breadth of struggles related to various forms of impoverishment, from period poverty to more common perceptions of poverty, such as economic inequality and hunger.

The Steps to Happiness Event

In Florence, Italy, the Lorenzo de’Medici school recently held The Steps to Happiness event where students wrote poems to inspire other young people to join Malala Yousafzai’s campaign to provide education for all. The winner of the competition, Katelin Pierce, captures the essence of expanding educational opportunities for young girls:

“These little girls may have little voices

but they have large hearts and many hands

and they grab all they can of letters and words and ideas

whispered to them in hushed tones.”

Hunger in the UK

Another poetry competition in the United Kingdom merged the Young Poets Network with End Hunger UK to address the crisis of food poverty in Britain. Statistics cited by the End Hunger organization claim that 1 in 4 parents with children aged 18 and under skip meals because they lack financial means; in fact, the United Kingdom falls only behind Albania as the second most food insecure country in Europe. The Young Poets Network and End Hunger UK teamed up to challenge British writers aged 11-25 to write about their personal experiences with food insecurity and to offer solutions to solve the food crisis. While poverty-fighting poetry enables young people to speak about their struggles with impoverishment, it also builds bridges of understanding and empathy.

These examples are all instances of poverty-fighting poetry that challenge traditional notions of which means can and cannot be used to address issues of global poverty. Innovative humanities-based approaches to poverty can accomplish something that more clinical and statist-based approaches cannot offer: understanding.

– Grayson Cox
Photo: Flickr

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Brexit and Poverty in Britain

Brexit and Poverty in Britain
In 2016, 51.9 percent of voters in The United Kingdom voted for Britain to leave The European Union. This controversial decision left many scholars and politicians scrambling to predict what social and economic consequences would follow for the country. Many significant studies have been conducted on the possible effects of Brexit and poverty in Britain, but it is impossible to definitively know what repercussions the transition will bring.

In March 2019, the transition out of the EU is set to begin. Many facets of British life, politics and economics will be impacted by this shift, yet the effect of Brexit on poverty in Britain remains complicated and vague. Some may claim that Brexit will not increase British poverty rates while others argue that it will. Some of the most influential determinants of national poverty are healthcare, food security, and household income and expenditure.

Health Care and Medical Services

The British National Healthcare System (NHS) has historically been dependent on non-U.K./ EU nationals to contribute to the medical workforce. In 2017, 60,000 workers in the NHS were non-U.K./EU nationals. Since Brexit, however, many medical professionals have left The U.K. due to uncertainty about legal status and protections post-Brexit. Leaving the EU also makes recruiting international employees more difficult as there will be less recognition of professional qualifications received in other countries.

Immediately after the Brexit vote, the number of non-U.K./EU nurses applying to join the British nursing register fell by about 96 percent. Patients are being forced to wait over longer periods of time for treatment simply because there are not enough medical professionals available. This is a dangerous and potentially fatal repercussion of Brexit.

Food security

In the case of a no-deal Brexit, food security would suffer as 30 percent of the national food supply comes from the EU The country does not have a clear food stockpiling location as it is accustomed to importing food and consuming it rather quickly afterward. The EU is such a large provider of food for Britain that no other country could easily replace this supply.

The U.K. itself will have trouble producing enough to make up for the deficit since it faces its own problems with food production as a result of things like changing weather conditions. Many are concerned that a no-deal Brexit could cause catastrophic food shortages in the country.

Household costs and incomes

Brexit will have a negative impact on the ability of the U.K. to import any kinds of foreign European goods and services. Because of this, the prices of goods and services will increase. Of course, this will affect all populations in Britain, but it will be felt most intensely by poorer households who will not be able to keep up with these price increases.

On the other hand, it is possible that if Brexit may lead non-U.K./EU workers to leave Britain, there may be an influx of job opportunities in the country. This could mean that some poor British citizens may be able to find more lucrative work.

As Brexit approaches, the United Kingdom is beginning to take precautions to ensure that the transition occurs smoothly. Though there is disagreement on what a proper Brexit would entail, all seem to agree that the priority should be the protection of the British citizenry. The political and partisan debates over what Brexit will mean for the country can only involve precaution and prediction as no one can be certain what March 2019 will bring or what the effect of Brexit on poverty in Britain will be. One can only hope that the well being of vulnerable citizens will be considered.

– Julia Bloechl
Photo: Flickr

Child Poverty In the UK

Poverty In the UK
Child poverty in the UK? According to child protection and poverty charities, child poverty is rising in the United Kingdom, despite the government’s promise to eradicate it by 2020.

Bernado’s children’s charity and Child Poverty Action Group say that 3.5 million children live in poverty in Britain today. The government measures child poverty differently, not accounting for housing costs, and so they claim that the number is in fact 2.3 million.

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions spoke to the BBC about the need for “better measures of child poverty that are not so heavily dependent on where we draw the poverty line.”

Child poverty charities also accuse the government of perusing a series of economic cuts, which have hit the poor hardest and caused an unprecedented number of children to be living under the poverty line, but actually living in working homes.

On their Website, The Child Poverty Action Group remarks about the increasing trend for children living in poverty being from working homes: “Work does not provide a guaranteed route out of poverty in the UK. Two-thirds [66 percent] of children growing up in poverty live in a family where at least one member works.”

They predict that the government will not fulfil its promise to eradicate child poverty in 2020 and claim that due to current government policies, 4.7 million children will be living in poverty in the UK by 2020.

Statistics released last year also reveal that child poverty is unevenly dispersed across England, with urban areas most affected and no rural areas featuring in the top 20 list of worst affected constituencies. Manchester Central reported that 47 percent of children lived in poverty where as a few miles north in the picturesque countryside constituency of Ribble Valley, child poverty is less that 7 percent.

In London Councils, the average child poverty rate is 21 percent; however the disparity between councils can easily be seen when considering that 57 percent of children who live in Tower Hamlets in East London live in poverty, compared to only 6 percent in Wimbledon.

– Charles Bell

Sources: BBC 1, BBC 2, Child Poverty Action Group, Barnados
Photo: The Guardian