Calling for a better understanding of poverty and evidence-based supportive action.

 

Highlighting social and institutional maltreatment is not about apportioning blame, but about calling for a better understanding of poverty and evidence-based supportive action. Many hard-working and wellintentioned professionals find themselves having to conform with regulations that are counterproductive, and the interactions of people in poverty with institutions are often characterized by judgment, subjugation, compliance, and control. Particularly for welfare rights claimants, the web of surveillance mechanisms infringes on their privacy and human rights. In some countries, parents in poverty face intrusive and destabilizing investigations (home inspections, school visits) that exacerbate the challenges they face. These investigations sometimes lead to the unnecessary removal of children from their home, not due to physical abuse or parental wrongdoing, but because of financial hardship and deprivation. Family separation can have traumatic and life-long consequences if priority is not given to the children’s wishes in terms of contact with their family. Moreover, policies and practices that allocate more resources to family separation and surveillance services than to actually supporting families’ needs to be able to stay together must be reviewed and ended. Even though contexts vary, experience has shown that the majority of parents and children would prefer to stay together and support one another in the face of destitution, despite all the forces separating them