4th. study Observatori de Vulnerabilitat Creu Roja Catalunya

Observatori de Vulnerabilitat de la Creu Roja a Catalunya

4th study

Impact of the crisis on childhood and the school environment

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January 2013

Edition:Red Cross in CataloniaC. Joan d’Àustria, 120-12408018 Barcelona

Date: March 2013Edition and Translation: Òscar Velasco, Irene Peiró, Patty Ortin, Ricard Maudsley Irina González, Laia Muns, Sandra Solorzano and Lidia López. Editorial Team: Pilar Millán and Anna Sabaté.Photography and Graphic Team: Vidal Sabater and Raul CamañasDesign, layout and print: Gràfiques APR

© Creu Roja, 2013

The partial or total reproduction of this publication is not allowed, nor its treatment with computer, nor its transmission of any kind or by any way (by computer, mechanic transmission, by photocopy or any other means), its renting, loaning, or any other way of usage of the unit without the previous written authorization of the Copyright holders.

1. Presentation We are pleased to present the 4th study carried out by the Vulnerability Observatory, a project that started in 2011 with the aim of identifying the needs of people at-tended by the Red Cross in Catalonia in its programmes to combat poverty, and to adapt our humanitarian aid to their requirements. The other objective was to create an area for debate and a plan of action in line with those of other social agents, in order to implement our Humani-tarian Diplomacy strategy. Those two challenges have been achieved a year and a half later.

The Red Cross has created this study using the results of a survey that measured the aid that was given to families in one specific area – the programme to encourage children of school age to return to school, carried out by the Red Cross between August and October 2012 after the completion of the 1st study by the Vulnerability Observatory, which analysed the impact of the current economic crisis on children and the family.

In this project, the Red Cross has cooperated closely with the education community. The school is the first environment that can detect the deficiencies that children may have. Thanks to the contributions from teachers, social services, government offices and social entities, school has become a place where chil-dren’s situations of vulnerability can be minimized.

Childhood is the age group analysed in this study, because currently 26.4% of children are considered to live in conditions of poverty. These children have the universal right to education; they are entitled to receive this education in conditions of equality and dignity. They must be able to go to school with the sole concern of studying and sharing experiences with their colleagues. It is vital that the future of these children should not suffer from the deficiencies of their present situation.

The fight against social exclusion, especially in childhood, has to be a priority and a responsibility for all social agents: the government, social bodies, the education community, families and society in general. Together we can create an equal society, which guarantees equal opportunities to everyone in times of difficulty. The Red Cross in Catalonia hopes this study will draw attention to the problems currently facing many children and will contribute to the efforts to improve their quality of life.

Josep Marquès i BaróPresident of the Red Cross in Catalonia

IV STUDY OF THE OBSERVATORY

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2. INTRODUCTION

2.1 Profile of the families of the 1st Study

For this study, the Red Cross has used the results from the Vulnerability Studies and from the Fight against Poverty projects.

The results showed that the average income of the people who were being helped by the Red Cross was 550 euros a month. They also showed that 93.7% of the users suffered relative poverty, which means they lived with less than 700 euros every month. 91.7% lived in high poverty, that is, with less than 646 eu-ros monthly. 85.2% were living in conditions of very high poverty, which is less than 566 euros. More than 55% of people suffered material deprivation: that is, they couldn’t afford holidays or meals that contained meat, they were unable to keep their houses warm and they couldn’t afford an unforeseen expenditure of 600 euros.

Eighty per cent of respondents had children who were suffering because of the vulnerable situations of their families

Didn’t have a pair of proper shoes1 out of 3 children

Didn’t have proper books 1 out of 3 children

Didn’t practice any leisure activity6 out of 10 children

Didn’t possess material for outdoor leisure, like bikes, skates… 5 out of 10 children

3 out of 10 children

1 out of 4 children

Received help to afford the lunch service in school

Families who needed school lunch service but couldn’t afford it


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2.2 Projects of the Red Cross to help children

The Red Cross has launched a series of new projects designed to help vulnerable families cover the costs of their children’s schooling.

Aid for children returning to school

(*) Because of the timing of the project, the number of aid is inferior

2,073families attended

3,138children in the programme

971 grants

To buy books or reuse books and school material

2,760

To buy clothes and sport shoes

71*

Grants for summer camp

Number of children attended

The Red Cross in Cataloniaattended with these projects 80,523 children

Aid for children returning to school

Kits of social supportBasic products for children's nutrition and hygiene (2012).

22,606

Toy Campaign 17,604

Nutrition programManegement of the distributed food by the European Union (2012)

36,807

Project of child nutrition336 grants, in Janurary 2013, of the 506 covered in the initial objective of the project.

336/506

30% of all the people attended in these two projects were children

3,138


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2.3 Description of the study

A group of 737 people answered the survey, which allowed the Red Cross to compile the results listed be-low. All respondents had benefited from the Red Cross project to help families with the school expenses. In all, 1,762 people received this type of aid. The survey focused on the way families paid for food, books and other school materials, and aimed to identify the basic needs that they could not afford.

3. RESULTS OF THE SURVEY 3.1 Profile of the families who received help

The charts below show the number of people that asked the Red Cross for help. These percentages may not be representative of the whole population of Catalonia.

71.5%

43%

49.1%

SexWoman

Mean age 37 years old

SpanishNationality

Profile of the person

(1) One of the requirements for families to access the aid was to have a monthly wage equal or inferior to the one established by the Public Indicator of Income of Multiple Effects (IPREM): 532.51 euros per month, plus 125 euros by each son/daughter. If the mean profile of families has 2 or more children - can benefit from the helps with a wage equal or inferior to 750 euros - and 48.7% of the families that have received the help have inferior wage to 550 euros per month, we can conclude that the greater part of beneficiaries is very underneath of this threshold.

Mean ageFrom 36 to 45 years old

Children in school age2 or more children

41.8% of them are large families

Profile of the family

43%

63.1%

41.8%

Families with income below 550 euros a month48.7%

Families with no income at all11%


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550€

Monthly income

Cost of the children returning to school

Excess cost -178€

+33%

One child 339€

Two children 678€

Books215€

School material 124€

In more than 75% of the families all adult members are unemployed; one in 10 has no income.

The children attended by the Red Cross live in poverty and 63% live below the breadline. Thirteen per cent live in homes without income.

3.2 Cost of the children’s school

Families have to take care of the following expenses:

Books and school materials

Most respondents have two or more children and their income is lower than 550 euros a month. In all, the school materials for each child costs 339 euros, so a family with two children must pay 678 euros – that is, 178 euros more than what they earn in a month.

Origin of the family incomeMultiple choice

24.2%Wage

21.8%

Food allowance* 23.1%

Unemployment

21.0%

Minimum wage

13.0%

Informal income

7.3%

Help from families and friends

11.0%

Has no income at all

*Food allowance for children

Books and school material are the main expense for families when their children return to school

38.7%from 100 to 300€

1.5%no reply

26.2%assigns more than 300 euros€

23.3%assings from 1 to 100€

10.3%doesn't assign any money


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3.3 Program of aid to children for the school year 2012-2013

A group of 66% of respondents received help from the Red Cross for the first time thanks to this program. The rest of the families were already receiving help from the Red Cross in the form of food parcels.

Distribution of aid Evaluation of the aid

88.2% 94.3% 53.7%

93.9% 40%

88.2% 35.3%

Sports clothes

Considers the help to be good or very good

Considers it to be insufficient

Books and school material

Aid for summer camp

Percentage of the families who received aid

35.3%

2.3%

Expenses in school lunch service

27%doesn't have any expense*

35%assigns 100€

euros a month

38%can't afford it

* This doesn't mean that they don't have this service, because this expense can be covered by a different type of aid (scholarships, family allowances, helps of the entities...).

Cost of outdoor clothes

1.1%no reply

6%assigns more than 300€ a month

33.6%destina de1 a 100€

25.5%assigns from 100 to 300€

33.8%doesn't assign any money

Doesn't pay the expense of the AMPA*

50%

Doesn't pay for extra activities in school

52%

79%

Has no expenses on after school activities

86%

Has no expenses on transport

94%

Doesn't pay for any classes after school

* School Parents Association


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Public grants 34.4%

Friends and family 24.5%

School 8.8%

Other entities or NGO, different from the Red Cross 9.7%

Grant providerMultiple choice

2.4%

38.2%

10.2%

Relation between public grants and the reduction of the help

Half of the people who received help has stopped receiving it this year or has received less than the year before

Has stopped receiving help

Receives less help

Receives the same help but less money

Other helps for school

Apart from the aid received by the Red Cross

... 2 out of 4 familieshave received help apart from the one given by the Red Cross

3.4 Other grants; weaknesses identified and impact on the families

3.4.1 Other helps for school

34.4% of families receive public aid to cover the cost of school for their children but the help they receive is less than last year

3.4.2 Needs that haven’t been covered

77.7%of the respondents cannot cover all the necessities of their children's school

22.3%could afford them

43.3%

50.4%

8.0%

32.6%

37.9%

1.2%

26.7%

59.9%

16.1%

8.4%

Needs not covered

School lunch service

AMPA*'s expense

Cost of the lunchbox

Extra activities

After school activities

School transport

School review

School material

Clothes

No reply

* School Parents Association


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Lunch service

Aid for school clothes

Books and school material

78%

64% 61.1%56%

45.6%40.8%

20.8%

School transport

Academic help

Aid for meals before

and after lunch

Extra activities

Do you have economic difficulties to cover any of these expenses for your children?Multiple choice

70.3%

Yes healthy food

32.8%

Yes, for some medication

70.3%

Yes, for oral and optical treatments

Does the lack of school material affect the children's academic results?

10.9%

Does not affect in any way

76.6%

Yes, it impacts the academic results

77.1%

Yes, it impacts his or her self-esteem

3.4.3 Families’ evaluations

The families who answered the survey had to score the help they received on a Likert scale of 1 to 5, with a maximum score of 5. The charts below show the percentage of the families who gave scores of 5 for the help they received according to type of need:

The aid for school meals is one of the main priori-ties for many families.

Thirty-eight per cent of the families cannot afford the school lunch service. Of these, 79% cannot guarantee healthy nutrition for their children.


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4. CONCLUSIONS

Child Poverty

Childhood is the group with the highest percentage of poverty in Catalonia. Results published by Idescat (Statistics Institute of Catalonia) in December 2012 show that 26.4% of catalan children live below the breadline, compared with 19.1% in Spain as a whole.

In all, 214,869 people received food and basic necessities in 2012 from the Red Cross. Over a quarter - 28.63% - of them were children, that means 61,505 children in over Catalonia. If 1 out of 4 children is poor in the community, 1 out of 3 people that receive basic help from the Red Cross is a child.

The results from the fourth study of the Observatory of Vulnerability show that 55% of the children whose families answered the survey live in conditions of material deprivation and 75% live at homes where all of the adult members are unemployed, and no longer have any official income. One out of every 6 children lives in a situation of real poverty, and 20% of them live in homes that have no income at all or that need help from friends and family. In the best of cases, some families depend on incomes that are insufficient and temporary. This creates situations of real precarity.

Eighteen per cent of the children attended by the Red Cross live in homes below the minimum standards and lack adequate supplies. By its direct action, the Red Cross comes into contact with families with chil-dren who live under the threat of eviction for not paying their rent, or who live illegally in squats (although the Red Cross does not have reliable statistics on the number of people living in this situation).

Impact

The role of the school is, among other things, to promote social equality. Unfortunately, the current economic crisis makes it particularly difficult to carry out this function.

Many families find it very hard to take care of the school expenses and many others are completely un-able to pay them. This situation is on the increase and those who are affected state that the help they receive (from their families or institutions) is not enough. The lack of resources of these families has a double impact on the education of their children. First, the academic results may be disappointing; second, their self-esteem may be damaged.

The study reveals that 77% of the children who are seen by the Red Cross started the school year without the material needed (for example, textbooks and proper clothes). It also reveals other worrying deficiencies, such as nutrition. The study states that school has become the only guarantee for many families that their children have an appropriate meal with the dining service. Most of them cannot pro-vide a healthy lunch for their children.


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The study also reveals that the mental and physical health of the child can also be impaired by the social and economic difficulties of their families. The personal relationships that these children have established can be damaged because they are no longer able to do the activities that other children can do. In conclusion, the study indicates that the impact of the economic crisis in the academic environment may have consequences in the middle and long term for the child’s formal and personal development.

Help available

The current aid available does not cover the most basic needs for the children, or at best only partially. Help from families, friends and the social setting has become crucial to guarantee the children’s needs, because of the lack of public help.

Schools and social entities try their best to minimize the impact of the economic crisis on vulnerable families. But their activity is also badly affected by the economic difficulties of the current context.

The increasing demand for aid for meals proves the insufficiency of the public help. The majority of this aid covers 50% of the cost of the meals; but there are many families that cannot take care of the other 50% of the payment, so they have not applied for it this year.

Thirty-eight percent of the people that answered the survey need their children to use the dining service in school, but they are unable to afford it.


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5. ACTIONS OF THE RED CROSS

In order to reduce the impact of the economic crisis on the children in vulnerable situations and also to help them with their academic development, the Red Cross has organized the following programmes:

Emergency programme for children’s alimentation

In November 2012, the Red Cross started this programme to provide financial help for families all around Catalonia who cannot pay for the school’s dining service expenses. Today, 288 children in vulnerable situations receive this economic support from the Red Cross in Catalonia.

The first study made by the Red Cross’s Observatory of Vulnerability was carried out in July 2011 and it analysed the impact of the economic crisis on the children. In that year, the Red Cross demonstrated that 1 out of every 4 families in vulnerable situations could not afford school meals for their children. This result was one of the reasons why the Red Cross decided to implement this project in 2012. Compared with 2011, the proportion of children who needed help to pay for school meals has risen by 38%.

The Red Cross invested 125,000 euros obtained from The Marathon for the poverty of TV3 (a program broacasted by the Television of Catalonia with the aim of collecting funds for the fight against poverty projects of the social entities of Catalonia) on this project. Even so, since the beginning of the project, the Red Cross has been trying to obtain other sources of income, to help more children. For example, in the last couple of months of 2012, the Red Cross linked a campaign to recruit new members to this project, and devoted part of the registration fees of those members to financing the dining school service for many children. Other companies, like Caprabo, have made economic contributions to this project by selling charity bracelets for 1 euro.

Projects to children in vulnerable situations

In September 2012, for the first time, the Red Cross implemented this project to distribute certain goods (such as clothes, books or school material) to families in vulnerable situations. The organization distributed 180,000 euros to 3,138 catalan children, with the support of the Catalan government’s Department for Social Welfare and the Family. The Red Cross offered this aid in the form of tickets that the families can use in certain clothing shops, libraries and other places.


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Support for the Families: new ways to provide attention

In the last term of 2012, the Red Cross started installing Points of Support for the Families (PSF) all around Catalonia. The intention is to attend to the needs of people in vulnerable situations that seek help and to assign them programs that satisfy their needs. This information point also has the aim of providing guidance for children. This type of support has changed completely the institution’s previous model of attention to the public.

The PSF will help to implement other projects, such as the distribution of food, and it will create new pro-jects and encourage teamwork. All these establishments will offer hosting service and maps of the sources available for every family. Some of the PSF will also have centres to help organize the families’ time or economy. The Red Cross is trying to recruit families that want to volunteer helping others in these places.

Project of academic success

This project is aimed at 6 to 16 year old children at risk of social exclusion, who are entering the obligatory school system. The objective is to provide these children with resources that allow them to develop their own autonomy and help them to make the right choices, applying a critical perspective. The project also encourages children to develop leisure activities that promote education outside the academic environ-ment. It also helps to cover the basic urgent needs of the youth throughout the country.

The project focuses on revision classes, support for children, the covering of their basic needs (meals, school material, and so on), leisure activities, and the child’s environment (parents and educators). This will help the child to develop educational skills.

The project Support for Families is the ideal environment for the academic success project. The two pro-jects share the same goals. The desire is to implement Support for Families throughout Catalonia in the first semester of 2013.

Red Cross Youth Project: Social Mediation Centres (CMS), playrooms and summer recreation

The Red Cross Youth also manages many other projects to cover the education and the leisure needs of children in vulnerable situations. Among them are the Social Mediation Centre (CMS), where children at risk can do their homework and other activities after school, under the supervision of the staff. In 2012, 540 children joined these centres around Catalonia. The organization has also set up playrooms, and every summer it organizes recreation spaces for the families that cannot afford these types of activity for their children. Last summer, over 800 children joined these recreation places.


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Distribution of food and basic necessities

The Red Cross runs two main projects to distribute food and hygienic products: the European Union Nu-trition programme and the distribution of social support kits of basic products. The Nutrition programme reached 151,172 people during 2012, 36,807 of whom were children (24.35%). The social support kits were distributed to 63,697 users, 24,718 of whom were children (38.81%). In total, with these two pro-grammes, the humanitarian institution distributed food and basic necessities to 214,869 people, 61,525 (28.63%) of whom were children.

Toy campaign

Every Christmas, the Red Cross Youth holds an annual campaign to collect toys, which will be distributed to children in vulnerable situations. This year, 21,832 children benefited from this campaign – twice as many as four years ago.

If you want to know more about this study, you can access the video of the Red Cross in Catalonia of the im-pact of the crisis on childhood and the school environment through the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agpf7tcyq1c

Humanitat Imparcialitat Neutralitat Independència Voluntariat Unitat Universalitat

www.creuroja.org 902 22 22 92

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4th. study Observatori de Vulnerabilitat Creu Roja Catalunya