Child Poverty in Wales
Exploring the Challenges for Schooling Future Generations
Editor(s) Lori Beckett
Language: English
Genre(s): Social Policy and Law, Politics
- July 2023 · 264 pages ·216x138mm
- · Paperback - 9781837720606
- · eBook - pdf - 9781837720613
- · eBook - epub - 9781837720620
About The Book
This edited book is about child poverty in Wales, specifically in a local school-community that identified its causes and effects, the challenges it poses for schooling future generations, and a series of local solutions that personify Wales’s devolved governments’ social democratic social imaginary. These responses all markedly contrast those of conservative UK Westminster governments espousing neoliberal logics for a global economy in consecutive prime ministers’ hallmark policies – Thatcher’s de-industrialisation, Cameron’s austerity, Johnson’s Brexit and Global Britain agenda, Truss’s Net Zero agenda, and Sunak’s new economic agenda in an effort to reunite the Conservative Party and win back public as well as business confidence. These policy agendas are invariably policy failures that play out for children and young people in their lived experiences of poverty and inequalities, and that find expression in social emergencies and humanitarian disasters apropos the cost of living crises, for example, as documented in this volume.
Endorsements
‘The relentless pursuit of neoliberal policies by the UK government will only be halted through concerted action by social movements to reassert the values that inspired the creation of the welfare state. This book offers inspiring examples of what can be achieved, in Wales and beyond, through a renewed commitment to solidarity.’
-Philip G. Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
‘The contributors to this excellent volume show how social research needs to be placed within its historical context, across space, and incorporate values that are not neutral but struggled over. The authors move smoothly between qualitative and quantitative research, giving a detailed description of how childhood poverty is produced and reproduced.’
-Professor David Hursh, Warner Graduate School of Education, University of Rochester
Contents
Foreword by Ruth Lupton (University of Manchester)
Editor’s Introduction
‘The little case that can’ conjoin the local & national to address child poverty
by Lori Beckett (Bangor University)
Chapter 1 Children First – A place-based approach to addressing poverty & inequalities by Caryl Lewis (cwmniCELyn)
Chapter 2 A Balancing Act: juggling school policies in a community with unmet needsby Angharad Evans (Ysgol Trem y Mynydd)
Chapter 3 An ‘open door’ school policy for resident families: croeso/welcome! by Dafydd Jones (Ysgol Trem y Mynydd)
Chapter 4 Hungry kids: families’ food insecurity further exposed by the pandemic by Jess Mead Sylvester (Mantell Gwynydd) & Paul Joslin (Wild Elements)
Chapter 5 Pride is key: the built environment, social housing and fuel poverty by Dylan Fernley (Gwynedd Council), Pete Whitby (local resident) and Grant Peisley (Datblygiadau Egni Gwledig)
Chapter 6 It takes a Village’ to realise school-community development by Gwen Thirsk (Swydddog Buddsoddi Lleol)
Chapter 7 Lyricism & hip hop to counter miseducation in a school-community in poverty by Owen Maclean & Martin Daws (Letters Grow Project)
Chapter 8 Outdoor learning: addressing student alienation & disengagement by building social capital by Graham French (Bangor University) with Claudia Howard (Wild Elements)
Chapter 9 Collaborative school improvement: Developing research-informed support for social justice by Richard Watkins (GwE)
Chapter 10 School Heads: Enacting school-community development in response to child poverty by Eithne Hughes (Association of School & College Leaders, Cymru)
Chapter 11 The consequences of child poverty and inequalities for future generations by Sue Whatman (Griffith University)
Chapter 12 Towards a critical understanding of Wales’ present for future generations by Lori Beckett, Graham French, Carl Hughes (Bangor University) and Gwen Thirsk (Swydddog Buddsoddi Lleol)
Compound List of References
Appendices #1-#8