SVP Submission on the EU Child Guarantee

SVP welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth on the EU Child Guarantee.

As the largest charity of social concern in Ireland we work to provide practical assistance to those experiencing financial hardship and work to address the root causes of poverty through our policy and advocacy work. Child poverty is a core issue of concern for SVP as last year we received over 170,000 requests for assistance and almost 70% of those requests were from families with children. We believe that the EU Child Guarantee, if designed and implemented effectively, has huge potential to prevent and combat social exclusion by guaranteeing the access of children in need to a set of key services.

In this submission we outline the need to implement the Child Guarantee as part of a new comprehensive and cross-departmental National Child Poverty Plan, the key gaps in service provision for children as seen by SVP, and our policy priorities for the EU Child Guarantee.