Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 1) | Page 77

Understanding Policy Issues in Poverty

Meeting needs of children
In helping children in poor families, it is always important to remember
that all children, regardless of where they live or how much their parents
earn, share the same foundational needs. Children require responsive care
giving, safe and secure environments, adequate and appropriate nutrition,
and health-promoting behaviours and habits. To meet these needs, parents
must have four clusters of capacities - financial resources, investment of time,
psychological resources, and work capability. All these are facilitated by the
family’s income and assets. To supplement income, transfers from the state
and philanthropic sources enhance the families’ capacities.
Families also live and raise children in a neighbourhood and community. As
a small city-state with state sponsored housing, most families are sheltered
from the challenges that come with adjustments from having to move a lot
and to quite different environments as would be the case in large countries.
The research in the US has found that there are benefits of living in highopportunity neighbourhoods. The project, Moving to Opportunity, and rightly
named, tested the long term benefits of helping poor families move from
severely distressed housing projects to lower poverty and higher education
level neighbourhoods. The results show significant benefits to health and
better outcomes in work and in school. This project is different from the
typical programs designed to help low-income families in the States pay for
housing which tends to be in distressed and dangerous neighbourhoods that
continue to entrap them.
We can all appreciate that where we live, and especially where children grow
up, matters. The evidence2 is indisputable that living in severely distressed,
high-poverty neighbourhoods seriously undermines children’s well-being and

2 Tackling Persistent Poverty in Distressed Urban Neighbourhoods by Margery Austin Turner,
Peter Edelman, Erika Poethig, and Laudan Aron; and Urban Institute White Paper, June 2014

76