Week 7
Provide a couple of facts about the History of Assistance Provisions in Ontario.
Mother's Allowance (1920s) - Federal Employment Insurance (1940s) - There was a transfer from a Keynesianism system to a Neoliberal - Keynesian brought the expansion of the welfare state (1960s-70s) - Neoliberal brought a retrenchment of social assistance and a 9-year wage freeze (1980s & 90s)
Describe the Intersectionality of Gender and Sexuality and how they relate to young girls.
Gender Race Theory: A theoretical framework to contest power imbalances based upon gender identities. Gender refers to the roles and expectations; Sexuality refers to how people experience sexual identity through sexual orientation and desire.
Women and young girls are susceptible to:
- Double-Days: Employment and family responsibility.
- There can also be limits to school and work opportunities due to gender-based violence
What is 'Childhood Maroturium' and how does it impact the child-adult relationship? Describe the differences between how adults and children are represented regarding poverty and context.
Childhood Maroturium: Is a postponed 'time-out' for children for engaging from adult society; Children are expected to engage in unlearning activities that prepare them as future adults.
Children - Represented in Poverty: Seen as victims and the 'deserving poor' Represented in Context: Future social and economic capital - they have a right to support from poverty
Adults - Represented in Poverty: Not seen as victims and considered the 'underserving poor' Represented in Context: Present social and economic capital - Responsible for addressing their poverty
Describe the ways that Amartya Sen, Leon Tikly, & Benjamin Curtis believe that education can help in poverty reduction.
Amartya Sen: Education expands capabilities and analytical and practical tools for making reasoned decisions. It empowers marginalized/excluded individuals to participate in public dialogue and develop critical thinking.
Leon Tikly: A good quality education enables all learners to realize their full capabilities, become economically productive, and enhance their well-being
Benjamin Curtis: The persistent inadequacies of education in poorer countries are an affront to justice, and there is no reason the world should accept it
Everyone has a right to education, but it can be a poverty trap of financial and opportunity costs, life disruptions, and systematic racism.
What is Bill C-92, and what is it designed to do? What does it say about impoverished homes?
An Act Respecting FNIM Children, Youth and Families: Designed to address injustice
- Indigenous communities and groups will be free to develop policies and laws based on their histories, cultures, and circumstances where a conflict arises between provincial law and Indigenous law.
-Poverty-related neglect is symbolic of the micro-focus on a child's well-being. Rather than removing children from impoverished homes, the first steps should be to provide support to address the socio-economic barriers
How does Neoliberalism view street-involved youth, and what do they say about how living on the streets affects them and their friendships?
Street-involved youth are seen as 'debt creators' because they are typically viewed as loiterers, vandals, and thieves who routinely use up services they 'do not deserve' - Youth feel that friendships made on the street help them to be themselves and that their friendships are Reliable, Loyal, Supportive, and where they find Connection.
What are OW & ODSP designed to cover, and what does a single person on OW and ODSP receive a month?
Living expenses (food & Rent) - Health benefits - Employment support - OW: Designed to help people get back into the workforce and connects people to social services ($733/month) ODSP: Designed for people who cannot work due to illness or disability ($1368/month)
Describe the Intersectionality of Disability and how this relates to childhood poverty.
Disability Theory: A theoretical framework that contests pathologizing individuals with impairment and draws awareness to the disabling features of society that they experience.
- They experience higher levels of social and economic hardship, significantly higher extra costs, financial vulnerability, and are at an increased risk for institutionalization.
- Caring for a child with an impairment is 2-3 times more expensive than caring for a child with no impairment.
There is also the added burden of finding adequate housing and the risk of having unmet needs because of limited resources and lack of entitlements to basic security. Children will experience more disablement of poverty's unacceptable hardships.
Describe some reflections on mothers and children on Neoliberal Antipoverty Initiatives.
Neoliberalism posits human capital development as the route to ending poverty, and parental practices are held to be central to social mobility.
The consequence is that it positions impoverished women against impoverished children.
They will invest in the child, but the mother will no longer have agency in the process.
Neoliberal anti-poverty strategies that are based on investing in the child do little to address the structural causes, as exemplified by the Opporttunidads Program.
Girls are considered an excellent investment that are depicted as more valuable than women and are therefore positioned as future mothers than as children. Efforts toward children reduce resources for adults, rendering them less able to support children.
What are some barriers in Education that can hinder Poverty Reduction?
Financial Costs: Even though fees to attend public school have been eliminated in many countries, families are still responsible for uniforms, school supplies, transportation, etc.
Opportunity Costs: Sending a child to school often means the child cannot work to help support the family.
Life disturbances: Shocks such as war and natural disasters impede school attendance
Systematic Discrimination: Inhibits school attendance for people from various groups
- Education can be a poverty trap because economically poor families are less likely to send their children to school, which means they remain illiterate and innumerated, which keeps them poor
Describe the Poverty-Aware-Paradigm (PAP) for child protection and the framework for what it does.
Risk within child protection discourses is focused on the harm assumed to be caused by parental action/inaction and not focused on structural inequities. - We must move away from this responsibilizing frame and toward a social justice one. - We need economic rights
Ontology: Takes a broad view of the risks to children's well-being to see why harmful policies and practices exist
Epistemology: Says we need to build relationships with social workers and on power relationships and with those who are affected by poverty.
Axiology: says we need to protect children from potentially harmful situations and that this should be valued as the moral duty of child protection
What are the 4 general principles in the UNCRC and the right to housing
Non-Discrimination: Never being denied housing based on identity (including SES)
Best Interest: Always consider the location in consideration to the child's best interest
Life, Survival, and Development: Spaces should promote children's well-being
Participation: Children should have a say in where they live
Describe Ontario's Universal Basic Income Pilot Program (UBI)
The program believes everyone should be entitled to a certain level of income; A focus on their right for meeting basic needs; A way of viewing poverty from a social justice lens.
UBI programs are consistent with an approach that recognizes economic security as a human right and a basic entitlement. - This was a way to bring back Keynesianism, but it was cancelled the following year.
When building Early Learning and Child Care systems, what should they include? (remember RTI)
Regulation: All young children have the right to regulated, inclusive, and culturally safe ELCC.
Transparency: Publicly funded child care programs and facilities create more transparency.
Inclusion: The government must provide affordable fees, provide well-paid caregivers, and expand through non-profit programs that support underserved communities.
What is Sustainable Development Goal #4, and how can we fulfill this goal?
SD Goals is a list of goals to promote human life. Goal 4: Quality Education: Goal #4 concerns quality education. The goal can be fulfilled by ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.
In addition to free primary and secondary schooling to all by 2030, the goal is to provide equal access to vocational training, eliminate gender and wealth inequities and achieve universal access to quality higher education.
Education is a right, and the SDGs are designed to validate students' rights and prepare schools for success.
What is the Epistemic Responsibility and describe the framework for addressing poverty
It is our responsibility to deal with the fact that childhood poverty exists. Individuals are failing to account for: No Shame: There is a responsibility not to shame, stigmatize, or exclude poor individuals or children; Do More: There is a responsibility to help ensure that institutions can do more because they are to blame; Direct Help: Direct help for poor children and their families can be achieved through donations in kind or monetary contributions and through engaging in supportive conversations and listen to their concerns.
General Comment #4 of the UNCRC states that the right to adequate housing should include what aspects?
General Comment #4 should include:
- Legal security of tenure - Availability of services
- Affordability - Habitability - Location
- Accessibility - Cultural adequacy
Explain Income Assistance as Moral Governing and hows Intersectionalityimpactst Poverty.
Historically, those who received social assistance have been deemed less deserving. However, the changing role of case work and the need to demonstrate sufficient work efforts have opened new areas for moral judgment that intersect with race, indigenety, gender, disability, and sexuality, which produces stigmatization and vulnerability for those of multiple identity factors.
Intersectionality is a tool that can help reveal and respond to societal injustice that results in inequities.
Describe the back-and-forth child care controversy between Paul Martin, Stephen Harper, and Justin Trudeau. How will Trudeau's vision benefit children, parents, and society?
Martin's Government signed bilateral agreements with all provinces and territories for a national childcare program. Harper's Government immediately terminated these agreements when he came into power and replaced them with the $100/month Universal Child Care Benefit for all children under 6.
Trudeau established a framework for equality with a program for $10/day childcare for ALL Canadians (Multilateral Early Learning and Child Care Framework - MELCCF). Benefits to children: Enhances cognitive and social development. Benefits to parents: The stay-at-home parent can participate in the labour force. Benefits to Society: The more equality children have from birth, the better chances they will have in their future.
Describe 3 aspects of the Education Agenda under the Liberal Party of Ontario in 2003-2018 (McGuinty & Wynne)
Consolidating through Partnership: Liberal Party took a more respectful approach to teachers, but still did not allow for autonomy to teach. They were still expected to teach from the lean model and teach according to standardized testing requirements.
Consolidating through Positivist Policy Science: Reduces political questions to technical ones, making issues tangible, measurable, and testable.
Consoladating through De-Politixized Citizenship: Education was framed as assuming individual responsibility for helping others and a commitment to civility and work readiness.
Why does poverty also include social exclusion?
When a child has no or insufficient access to social spaces, it creates a lack of a sense of belonging and can occur through formal or informal, and material or immaterial barriers to accessing spaces, through interpersonal processes of exclusion
How can rights be conceptualized as positive or negative rights?
Positive Rights: The government takes action to accommodate the rights (housing)
Negative Rights: Government action needs to be prevented from infringing on rights (the right to autonomy; the right from eviction)
Explain the purpose of the Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis and how it can be used in relation to poverty.
The focus is on the operation of power, which includes examining disciplinary power and structural power.
It shows how people are affected by intersectionality.
It shows how poverty impacts people differently and how we can draw attention to the different impacts.
How would Keynesianism and Neoliberalism consider the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care initiative and describe what might be regarded as a barrier to running this smoothly
Keynesianism would see equality and social justice, while Neoliberalism would take advantage of the opportunity to blame further those who remain in poverty.
Barriers: There is a lack of ECEs due to the high student loans required to become one and the low wages they encounter in the role at Childcare Centres.
What are the three attributes the education agenda was passed upon with the Progressive Conservative 'Common Sense' Revolution in 1995-2003? (Harris)
Universal Standardized Testing: Education quality and accountability office (EQUAO) is about testing the school's ability to teach
Reorientation of Curriculum: Specific subject content - Getting students ready for the workforce
Restructuring of Governance: Funding formula and reduction in elected school board power
What are Power Asymmetries, and how do they affect children?
Power is one-sided. There is not enough representation of poorer societies in policies or court matters, rendering poor people economically and politically powerless. The injustice of poor children's powerlessness is that their interests and needs are not taken seriously
Describe Article 11 of the International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
Guarantees the right to housing. However, it focuses neither specifically on children nor on the influence of inadequate housing on their development.
What is Critical Race Theory, and how can it impact poverty for children and Indigenous children?
Critical Race Theory (CRT): Helps us focus on the intersection of race and rights and provides a framework to consider the extent to which structural racism is implicated - It asks the question 'what does race have to do with it'
By incorporating the impact of race discrimination on children into critical race analysis, it can encourage adults to think about the long-term implications when contesting laws and policies.
Racilized children experience disproportionately higher rates of poverty as a result of systematic and structural racism
- For example, nearly 53% of indigenous children living on reserve are impoverished
Describe Early Education and Childcare and some barriers families face in Canada.
Child Care: Non-parental care arrangements that provide a safe environment for children while their parents work.
Early Education: Intentional programs that are designed to promote children's cognitive and non-cognitive development before they enter school
Barriers: Families face challenges in caring for children or working--Parents need to decide if working is costing more than they bring home due to high childcare costs; There are long wait lists due to the lack of centres, insufficient number of ECEs, and a lack of pay to keep the ones they have.
Describe the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Initiative and what the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada recommend establishing.
CWELCC is an investment to reduce the cost of child care to $10/day by 2025 for all Canadians.
The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada recommends establishing a national childcare policy to ensure women's equal participation within various social domains --- This is fundamental in recognizing the essential role of accessible child care in facilitating women's employment and broader social involvement.
Describe the differences between the Welfare State Education and the Neoliberal (Lean) State Education.
Welfare State Education: Is about citizenship, ensuring inclusion, and enabling students to thrive; It's 'Student-centred' to accommodate individuals and expand curriculum; It's less about competition and more about learning; It is designed to meet the needs of all students.
Neoliberal (Lean) State Education: Focus is on development for market outcome; It holds students to a narrow curriculum based on universal standards; Education is based on career opportunities and schools teach skills for the workplace to meet the needs of the market outcomes
Poverty comes down to political choices.
Poverty does not have to be as widespread as it is
Neoliberal ideas created poverty
Keynesianism can create more equalities
Children need help.
Poverty shames and stigmatizes children's experiences.
Childhood poverty is never the child's fault.
Describe Article 27 of the UNCRC
States parties shall take appropriate measures to assist parents to provide maternal assistance and support programs, particularly concerning nutrition, clothing, and housing.
- Policies like the removal of rent control directly violate this right