Stark findings from CSO strongly demonstrating childhood lasts a lifetime. Living in households with unemployment & financial difficulties as child led to far greater chance of living in deprivation, being unemployed, being dissatisfied with life & having worse health as adult.

Great to be at launch of @ChildLawProject Falling Through the Cracks report yesterday evening, vital reading. Child protection is the responsibility of everyone, any new government must act like that. Multi-departmental/agency strategy needed to address lack of places in care.

Hugely concerning at time when there are massive pressures on child protection system, funding for structure providing transparency & highlighting failings of that system and impact on children has been discontinued without new contract plans in place

Analysis shows that those around the third income decile did the least well out of the budget. Very concerning as many in this group struggled to provide children with essentials last year, and led to increase child deprivation.

Great to be at @ESRIDublin post budget analysis this morning. Disappointing to see projections suggest measures won't reduce child poverty next year. Strong evidence of need to index/benchmark social welfare payments, real concerns about impact when once off payments disappear.

Great to be at the launch of the @mesl_research 2024 MESL Report. Such a detailed and valuable piece of work, highlighting what income is needed to afford a decent standard of living.

Vital policy makers routinely think about how adverse circumstances affect parents wellbeing and the knock on impact on their parenting and children. As this report clearly shows 'impact of inadequate housing on mothers’ wellbeing spills over to harm their children’s wellbeing'.

Excellent report from @ESRIDublin this morning highlighting the impact of poor and inadequate housing on families and children. Far too many living in cramped and unsuitable accommodation for far too long. Damaging health, wellbeing and development.

Interesting seeing number of one parent families who said it was a great difficulty to make ends meet last year doubled from 9.7% to 17.9%, (3X more likely two parent families 5.8%) but number living in consistent poverty dropped from 15.5% to 7.1%.

Analysis shows cost of living measures introduced prevented more children and young people from being at risk of poverty and experiencing deprivation. The government needs to continue targeting supports at families most at risk of being pulled into deprivation.

These statistics echo concerns raised by staff across our services, that we continued to see more and more families struggling to provide their children with basic necessities throughout 2023 due to rapid inflation.

Again this year we see the disproportionate impact that poverty and deprivation has on children living in one parent families, over two fifths of whom (41.4%) are experiencing deprivation, almost two and a half times more likely in comparison to two parent families (17.7%).

Another example is more than one in five (20.9%) were unable to afford to regularly participate in a leisure activity that costs money last year, up from 17.5% in 2022.

For example, the number of children that went without heating at some stage last year increased from 8.8% to 12%. The number living in homes unable to afford to keep their home adequately heated increased from 6.6% to 9.3%.

SILC statistics published yesterday show that although number of children at risk of poverty in Ireland slightly decreased last year from 14.7% to 14.3%, number experiencing enforced deprivation and therefore going without essential items increased from 18.8% to 21.4%.

Easily accessible intensive support is particularly needed for parents struggling with mental health issues and additional adversities, such as deprivation and poverty, parental separation, substance issues which are often interlinked.

Support that focuses on helping parents develop ways to cope, regulate their emotions, and generally mitigate their mental health impacting on their children. Support that works with parents and children simultaneously, because childhood lasts a lifetime.

It’s clear from the findings that the level of support available doesn’t match the level of need out there. While universal supports and advice can be helpful for some parents experiencing mental health issues, for many there needs to be more intensive family support available.

As a society we need to address the stigma associated with this problem. The sooner parents look for support and help the better for them and their children. There needs to be better awareness about parental mental health, the impact on children, and the need for support.

Parents discussed the stigma they feel for having mental health issues that affect their parenting, the guilt they feel. This meant many don’t feel comfortable talking to family and friends about their problems, have to try and deal with it on their own.