A good presentation in committee room 3 at Parliament yesterday by UNICEF. They were presenting their report "Preventing HIV with young people: the key to tackling the epidemic".
An interesting discussion with UNICEF Chief of HIV/AIDS programme division. New York Jim Kolker talking about the situation in Africa and some of the good progress made in terms of preventing mother to child infection.
Dr. Nina Ferencic was presenting the issues in Eastern Europe and Asia started by reminding the audience that AIDS/HIV and its issues are not just African based, albeit the difficulties that exist there. She spoke about the former Russian states and the lives lived by children who as well as having HIV are often drug users & involved in the sex industry. Heavily stigmatised with no political or celebrity champions it is an uphill battle.
David Burrows the Chair of the APPG HIV/AIDS informed the meeting of the events mentioned by Neil Gerrard about children in the UK.
I had an oppourtunity to speak to some of the members of the Lords & Commons afterwards. I mentioned the situation in Northern Ireland relating the information passed to me by Tony Bell. It seems that even within the United Kingdom boarders, HIV is more heavily stigmatised in certain regions than others. Getting local political support difficult for many reasons least of all personally held discriminations.
On questioner asked the UNICEF delegation about criminalisation. The response was the same as given by UNAIDS at a similar meeting last year. That they were strongly opposed to this as it not only fertilised stigma but placed another barrier to people who would otherwise be tested.
Often we take for granted the services we have, we don't often stand up and fight where we should when those services are lost. I know living in London I am somewhat better placed than those who live in other parts of the country. I alarms me that there is sometimes a huge disparity in services offered and the delivery of same up and down the UK. I hear about it every day. I am grateful to those who email me as it centres my thinking and comment on the differences in the various meetings I attend.
Thanks to Baroness Northover who hosted the event.
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UNICEF Report Launch "Preventing HIV with Young People" - Lords
Click here to download and read the report on the launch event for UNICEF's Preventing HIV with Young People at the House of Lords.
Strengthening efforts to Prevent HIV
The AIDS epidemic is a global catastrophe responsible for over 20 million deaths worldwide, tens of millions of children left orphaned, and some 33 million people living with HIV. Although global HIV prevalence has levelled off, AIDS is among the leading causes of death globally and remains the primary cause of death in Africa.
Evidence shows that sustained, intensive programmes in diverse settings are reducing HIV incidence through behaviour changes, such as increased use of condoms, delayed sexual initiation and fewer sexual partners.
As one of ten co-sponsors of UNAIDS, UNFPA works to intensify and scale up HIV prevention efforts using rights-based and evidence-informed strategies, including attention to the gender inequalities that add fuel to the epidemic.
Within UNAIDS, the Fund takes a leadership role in condom programming and prevention among young people and women, two groups who are increasingly at risk of infection. It also reaches out to other vulnerable populations. Linking HIV responses with sexual and reproductive health care is the overarching strategy for reaching more people cost-effectively and moving towards the goal of universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010.
UNFPA is also committed to the human rights of people living with HIV and works to widen their access to sexual and reproductive health care that meets their specific needs.
http://www.unfpa.org/hiv/
Unite for Children
http://www.unicef.org.uk/campaigns/born_free/
http://www.unicef.org/aids/
http://www.unaids.org/en/default.asp
http://www.uniteforchildren.org/
http://www.childinfo.org/hiv_aids.html
http://www.undp.org/hiv/
WHO - Data and statistics
http://www.who.int/hiv/data/en/
The UK site for statistics on poverty and social exclusion.
This site monitors what is happening to poverty and social exclusion in the UK. The material is organised around 100 statistical indicators covering all aspects of the subject, from income and work to health and education.
The indicators and graphs can be viewed by age group or by subject using the menu on the left.
The material covers all parts of the United Kingdom, with specific sections for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
All data is from official sources and is the latest available. All graphs and text are updated whenever new data becomes available.
The INDICATORS
Browse the UK indicators, or those for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, rural England or the European Union.
KEY FACTS
No time to look at the indicators? Why not just look at some key facts then.
THE REPORTS
The eleventh annual UK report was published in December 2008. Reports are also available for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, ethnicity and disability.
WHAT'S NEW
The latest UK-wide analysis was published in December 2008. Each month, all the analyses for which there is new data are updated.
SUBJECT OF THE WEEK: lacking, but wanting, paid work
Unemployment is currently in the news as it has just gone over 2 million people. What is less well known, however, is unemployment has been on the rise since 2005 and therefore the increase is not solely due to the current recession. Furthermore, offical unemployment is less than half of the number of people who actually lack, but want, paid work. Read more ...
http://www.poverty.org.uk/
Child Poverty Action Group
http://www.cpag.org.uk/
Child poverty
The Government's aim is for every child to enjoy their childhood and have the opportunity to reach their potential.
In 1999, the Government announced its aim to eradicate child poverty by 2020. The Government now intends to enshrine this pledge in legislation. Since the commitment to eradicate child poverty was announced, good progress has been made. In 1998/99, there were 3.4 million children (26 per cent) living in poverty. By 2006/07 (the latest figures available) this had fallen by 600,000 children to 2.9 million children.
The Government has consulted extensively with stakeholders on how to measure and tackle child poverty. This has been instrumental in developing the Government's strategy. In 2004 the Government published the Child Poverty Review which examined both the welfare reform and public service changes needed to advance the long-term goal of halving and eradicating child poverty.
The Government built on this in Ending child poverty: Everybody's business, published alongside the 2008 Budget, which considered: the causes and consequences of child poverty; the costs associated with childhood experiences of poverty for both individuals and society; the impact of Government action so far; and policy direction for the future.
The work of the Child Poverty Unit (CPU)
At the end of 2007, the Government created the Child Poverty Unit (CPU) to bring together key officials in the Department for Works and Pensions (DWP), the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and HM Treasury. The work of the Unit focuses on taking forward the Government's strategy to eradicate child poverty for the long term. Work has included developing a range of child poverty pilots to test and explore new approaches to tackling child poverty at local level.
The Child Poverty Bill
The Child Poverty Bill was introduced to the House of Commons on 11 June 2009. The Bill is jointly sponsored by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Department for Work and Pensions and Her Majesty's Treasury.
The Child Poverty Bill enshrines in legislation the commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020. It defines success in eradicating child poverty and establishes an accountability framework to drive progress towards the 2020 goal at national and local level.
More information
Child Poverty Bill
Child Poverty Bill overview
Impact Assessment
Equality Impact Assessment
Consultation - Ending Child Poverty: Making it happen
In January 2009, the Government published Ending Child Poverty: Making It Happen, the consultation document which outlined the Government’s proposal to legislate for its commitment to eradicate child poverty.
This report provides the Government’s response to the consultation and summarises responses received.
More information
Child Poverty Bill Consultation Report: Stakeholder submissions and the Government’s response
Ending Child Poverty: Making It Happen
Take Up The Challenge, a report of the Take Up Taskforce
In November 2008 the Government created the Take Up Taskforce to advise on how local services can reduce child poverty through helping poor families to access the benefits and tax credits to which they are entitled.
Take Up the Challenge includes actions that local authorities and partners can take now to maximise families’ incomes, case studies of successful approaches, and recommendations for Government on how to support local services to increase take-up. A cross-government delivery group will work to secure a more customer centred and co-ordinated approach to the delivery of benefits and tax credits, and to produce materials to support local services to take the action in the report.
More information
Take Up The Challenge
Associated documents
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as a Word Document
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/strategy/parents/childpoverty/c...
Experiences and attitudes of children from low-income families
Little is known about how children come to terms with poverty or how they learn about the economic world around them. Using data from interviews with children aged between 5 and 16 years, this report describes how they make sense of the wider economic world, how they act in the knowledge that their family is poor and how low income influences their view of their own economic futures. From children�s own perspectives, it explores how far they are able to learn about money management, what they learn about their family�s economic position within society and the effect this has on children�s beliefs, behaviour and aspirations.
Summary
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March 1999 - Ref 379
The experiences and attitudes of children from low-income families towards money
Over one-third of British children are living in poverty. Yet little is known about the effect this has on their understanding of the economic world, their behaviour and beliefs, or their aspirations. This study describes the immediate effects of growing up in poor families drawing on evidence from the 'Small Fortunes' Survey of the lifestyles and living standards of children, undertaken by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University in 1995. The study shows that:
- two-fifths of children living in Income Support and lone-parent families worried that their family did not have enough money to live on, compared with less than 10 per cent of other children;
- many children who lived in lone-parent families learned at a young age not to ask for things they wanted;
- career aspirations were much lower among youngsters living in Income Support and lone-parent families compared with children from non-Income Support or two-parent families.
Background
Despite the growth in the number of British children said to be living in poverty over the last 20 years, little is known about how children come to terms with poverty and the effects of poverty on their beliefs, behaviour and aspirations. More generally, we have only limited knowledge about how children learn about the economic world around them. Yet children's knowledge and experience of both the economic circumstances of their immediate family and of the wider economic world outside the family are likely to affect their own economic futures. The central question which the research seeks to answer is, do children learn to be poor?
Children's experience of handling their own money
Children of lone parents (16 per cent) and of parents on Income Support (21 per cent) were more likely to receive pocket money infrequently and only when their parents' budget allowed than were children living in two-parent (eight per cent) or non-Income Support families (seven per cent).
Experience of part-time work was less likely for children (over 11 years old) of lone parents or from families on Income Support than for other children (see Figure 1). Approximately one-quarter (28 per cent) of children of lone parents were involved in paid work compared with two-fifths (41 per cent) of children in two-parent families. One-third of children from families claiming Income Support (32 per cent) had a part-time job compared with two-fifths of children in families not claiming Income Support (40 per cent).
Whilst less likely to have a part-time job, children from lone-parent or Income Support families who did work did so for longer hours and for lower rates of pay than other children. One-third of children in Income Support families and one-quarter of children in lone-parent families did more than seven hours paid work per week compared with just one-fifth of children in either non-Income Support or two-parent families. Children in lone-parent families earned on average 65p less per hour than children in two-parent families (£1.65 and £2.30 respectively). Children living in Income Support families earned an average of 45p less per hour than children in non-Income Support families (£1.82 and £2.27 respectively).
Learning from parents
Children living in lone-parent and Income Support families were more likely to learn about their family's economic circumstances from their parents than were other children.
More lone parents than two-parent families discussed with their children, family income (31 per cent and 13 per cent respectively) and spending (45 per cent and 33 per cent respectively). It is possible that lone parents are sharing their anxieties and concerns about money with their children in the absence of another adult with whom to discuss such matters. Discussions of family income were also more likely in families claiming Income Support (24 per cent) than in other families (15 per cent).
Children living in lone-parent families and those claiming Income Support were more likely to be reminded that their families could not afford things children wanted. Two-thirds of children in lone-parent and Income Support families said they frequently had their requests turned down because their family could not afford what they wanted compared with less than half of all children from two-parent or non-Income Support families.
Beliefs, behaviour and aspirations
A significant number of children living in lone-parent and Income Support families were worried that their family did not have enough money to live on (see Figure 2). Children in families on Income Support (42 per cent) were at least five times more likely to think that their family income was inadequate than other children (eight per cent). Similarly, children in lone-parent families (39 per cent) were over four times more likely to say that their family income was too low than were children in two-parent families (nine per cent).
To examine children's immediate expectations they were asked what they would ask for if it were their birthday next week. On the whole, children identified the same types of items and services, however, the estimated cost of the items named by children living in lone-parent and Income Support families was significantly lower than the cost of items named by other children. Regardless of the cost of the desired item, a significant number of children from lone-parent and Income Support families had learnt to accept that they might not get what they wanted for their birthday and to cover up their disappointment.
To establish children's future aspirations they were asked what they would like to do when they left school. Children in lone-parent or Income Support families had much lower career aspirations than children from either two-parent or non-Income Support families. Children from lone-parent or Income Support families were more likely than other youngsters to want jobs which typically take a minimal amount of time to train for and, on the whole, require few, if any, academic qualifications. Moreover, fewer children from lone-parent (21 per cent) or Income Support families (17 per cent) than children in two-parent (31 per cent) or non-Income Support families (32 per cent) aspired to join the labour market in the professional occupations defined as socio-economic group four.
Conclusion
The researchers conclude that as children learn about their family's financial situation, they are likely to form views about their family's economic position in relation to the rest of society. Children from lone-parent families, those who believe their family does not have enough money and those who are frequently denied items learn at a young age to curb their requests for items that they would like to own. Children living in lone-parent or Income Support families also have fewer opportunities to learn how to manage a regular sum of money than other children as they are less likely to receive pocket money or earn money from paid work. It is possible that, for some children, early learning of this sort reduces both their immediate expectations and future aspirations and that they are 'learning to be poor'.
About the study
Fieldwork for the 'Small Fortunes' Survey took place between February and June 1995. The survey was based on a random sample of individual children stratified by children's age, birth order and family type (whether children were living in one- or two-parent families). The dataset (now lodged with the ESRC Data Archive at the University of Essex) contains information about 1,239 children. This report is based on responses to an interviewer-administered questionnaire completed by 435 children aged between five and 16 years (27 per cent from Income Support families, 43 per cent from lone-parent families, with 22 per cent from lone-parent families on Income Support).
How to get further information
The full report, Small expectations: Learning to be poor? by Jules Shropshire and Sue Middleton, is published for the Foundation by YPS. (ISBN 1 902633 27 X, price £10.95 plus £2 postage).
Further details of this survey can be obtained from the authors (Jules Shropshire and Sue Middleton) at CRSP, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU.
Click on the 'order report' icon in the left margin to order online.
http://www.jrf.org.uk/node/1144
HIV prevention
While global prevalence of HIV infection (percentage of persons infected with HIV) appears to have stabilized in recent years, the global number of people living with HIV is increasing because of ongoing accumulation of new infections with longer survival times, measured over a continuously growing general population.
Across the world, a small but growing number of countries have reduced HIV prevalence through sound prevention efforts. The high rates of transmission of HIV result largely from failure to use the available and effective prevention strategies and tools, and poor coverage of HIV prevention programmes. HIV prevention services were only reaching 20% of people in need in 2005, while coverage for key populations at higher risk of exposure to HIV were considerably lower.
Effective HIV prevention programming focuses on the critical relationships between the epidemiology of HIV infection, the risk behaviours that expose to HIV transmission, and also addresses the collective social and institutional factors, such as sexual norms, gender inequality, and HIV related stigma, that will otherwise continue to fuel HIV epidemic.
Risk behaviours are enmeshed in complex webs of economic, legal, political, cultural and psychosocial determinants that must be analyzed and addressed by policies that are also effectively implemented, and through scaled-up programming.
Comprehensive HIV prevention requires a combination of programmatic and policy actions that promote safer behaviours, reduce vulnerability to transmission, encourage use of key prevention technologies, promote social norms that favor risk reduction and address drivers of the epidemic.
Effective prevention efforts focus on measures that directly support risk reduction by providing information and skills as well as access to needed commodities (such as condoms, sterile injecting equipment, and drug substitution therapy) for the populations most in need. In short, national planners and policymakers must: 1) Know their epidemic; and 2) Set priorities accordingly.
Prevention and treatment must be scaled up in a balanced way, to capitalize fully on synergies between the two. Comprehensive HIV prevention requires a combination of programmatic interventions and policy actions that promote safer behaviours, reduce biological and social vulnerabilities to transmission, encourage use of key prevention technologies, and promote social norms that favour risk reduction.
HIV prevention includes addressing an array of issues discussed in other thematic areas in the policy section of the website. Forging links among HIV prevention with related programmes and services such as sexual and reproductive health services and legal services for women, can also contribute to intensification of HIV prevention. Strong linkages as well as special efforts to reach those at higher risk and excluded from access to services will result in more relevant and cost-effective programmes with greater impact.
UNAIDS coordinates its own collective efforts on scaling up prevention, within the ambit of universal access to prevention, care, support and treatment, through building on the comparative advantages of the UNAIDS Cosponsors and Secretariat to support scale up of high quality, comprehensive HIV prevention programmes at all levels. UNAIDS also collaborates with a large number of other stakeholders and promotes and supports the development of strong HIV prevention constituencies. The main focus of UNAIDS on intensification of HIV prevention is at country level as part of its ongoing efforts to support countries to strengthen their overall national responses to the AIDS epidemic.
Essential Policy Actions for HIV Prevention
1. Ensure that human rights are promoted, protected and respected and that measures are taken to eliminate discrimination and combat stigma.
2. Build and maintain leadership from all sections of society, including governments, affected communities, nongovernmental organizations, faith-based organizations, the education sector, media, the private sector and trade unions.
3. Involve people living with HIV, in the design, implementation and evaluation of prevention strategies, addressing the distinct prevention needs.
4. Address cultural norms and beliefs, recognizing both the key role they may play in supporting prevention efforts and the potential they have to fuel HIV transmission.
5. Promote gender equality and address gender norms and relations to reduce the vulnerability of women and girls, involving men and boys in this effort.
6. Promote widespread knowledge and awareness of how HIV is transmitted and how infection can be averted.
7. Promote the links between HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health.
8. Support the mobilization of community-based responses throughout the continuum of prevention, care and treatment.
9. Promote programmes targeted at HIV prevention needs of key affected groups and populations.
10. Mobilizing and strengthening financial, and human and institutional capacity across all sectors, particularly in health and education.
11. Review and reform legal frameworks to remove barriers to effective, evidence based HIV prevention, combat stigma and discrimination and protect the rights of people living with HIV or vulnerable or at risk to HIV.
12. Ensure that sufficient investments are made in the research and development of, and advocacy for, new prevention technologies.
http://www.unaids.org/en/PolicyAndPractice/Prevention/default.asp
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