Child Poverty In Armenia

1515 Words7 Pages

Erasmus Mundus MA Advanced Development in Social Work (ADVANCES)
2014-2016 Cohorts

Child Poverty in Armenia and Social Work
Formative Assignment

Poverty is not about a shortage of money. It is about rights and relationships; about how people are treated and how they regard themselves; about powerlessness, exclusion and loss of dignity. Yet, the lack of an adequate income is at its heart (Faith in the city, 1985:xv).
Poverty is a complex phenomenon based on a network of interlocking economic, social, cultural and political factors (Kozel and Parker, 2007:296). It filters into every aspect of life. It is not simply about doing without things; it is about being denied the expectation of decent health, education, shelter, a social life and …show more content…

It is estimated that children are more likely to be poor, everything else held equal, if they have a disability or live with a disabled child, if they live in families headed by person with secondary education or lower, if their families are headed by non-married person and if they live in workless households (Yekaterina Chzhen, 2009:2). Whilst these figures do provide some indication of the overall impact of income poverty, Armenia does not yet systematically monitor child poverty and the real impact of social protection measures on poverty reduction; the adopted measures often fail to adequately capture poverty and deprivation (Child poverty in Armenia, UNICEF, 2009:2). Households and to live in poor housing conditions, lacking important housing amenities, having several housing problems and conditions described as bad or very bad, but poverty is not only an issue of economics. Living in poverty inevitably restricts the activities in which children can participate. Hardship Britain documents how many families could not afford to send their children on school trips or outings with friends (Carey Oppenheim, 1993:76). The negative impact of poverty has been documented in several …show more content…

Social workers can’t solve this multidimensional problem, but they can play a fundamental role in providing compensation and support to poor children and their families. It is proven that for children living in poverty, positive developmental outcomes, therefore depend on the capacity of their parents to protect them from the increased risks and stresses associated with their impoverished circumstances (Furstenberg 1993; Garbarino and Kostelny, 1993, cited in Gordon Jack & Owen Gill, 2013:224). For this reason social workers could empower parents, for example, in relation to training and work opportunities, the debt management skills, etc. (Gordon Jack and Owen Gill, 2013:229). From the perspective of child welfare, it is necessary to organize integrated support for the whole child. This includes providing effective assistance for the family (e.g., structural, financial, social and community work activities). Without family benefits, the extreme child poverty rate in Armenia would more than double, this leads to a conclusion that family benefits are crucial for extremely poor families in Armenia (Yekaterina Chzhen, 2009:29). Also, it is important that to improve their life chances, children from disadvantaged families be offered

Open Document