Welsh Women’s Aid has responded to the Welsh Government’s consultation on the revised Child Poverty Strategy for Wales

For a copy of the full response please click here, but here is a list of the recommendations made by Welsh Women’s Aid;

Summary of Recommendations

  1. Need for explicit connection being made in the strategy between child poverty, women’s poverty and how this can be exacerbated by experiences of domestic abuse;
  2. Prevention of violence against women and girls through the education system and the effect on improved attainment, achievement and aspirations, both when girls and young women are within the education system and after they have left education;
  3. Recognition for the impacts of welfare reform and disproportionate effect on women and their children and the links to poverty;
  4. Recognition of the disproportionate effect of poverty on single parents, who are most likely to be women;
  5. Recommend use of STAR (Safety, Trust and Respect) suite of services, aiming to support children and young people who are affected by domestic abuse, ensuring they can access to consistent high quality services. It also enables children and young people to develop respectful relationships in their own lives, preventing abuse in future relationships and consequential links to poverty;
  6. Increased access to the Flying Start Program for women fleeing domestic abuse in order to prevent increased likelihood of poverty;
  7. Recognition for the effectiveness of accredited domestic abuse perpetrator programmes as suggested through the results of the Mirabal Research study, and the role of this in preventing poverty;
  8. Recommend that domestic abuse specialist support services are identified as key partners in local and national collaborations to end child poverty;
  9. Implement two further indicators specific to monitoring effectiveness of domestic abuse prevention: a) percentage of children accessing domestic abuse prevention services (i.e. STAR suite of services); and b) number of adults who have been referred to a domestic abuse prevention programme (with detail whether this be STAR services, an Accredited perpetrator Programme, Pattern Changing Programme, Freedom Programme amongst those available).