– Artwork by Sophie Rhys

We are proud to share our second submission to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). Based on extensive research, led by people with lived experience of poverty and the social care system, alongside practitioners such as social workers, this submission focuses on the impact of poverty on right to protection and assistance to the family.

This contribution seeks to bring to the attention of the CESCR that families in poverty in the UK can be subjected by children’s social care to harsh interventions that are discriminatory and driven by a concept of risk-aversion that is inconsistent and fails to fully consider the harm done by removing children into State care or contested closed adoptions.

It can be read here: 2025-01-ATD-ICESCR-FINAL. An excerpt:

It is absolutely awful, soul-crushing, to have to hand your child over, crying for you, calling out, ‘Mummy!’ and you are court ordered to walk away. […] You end up feeling guilt for pretending to be okay. Because, if you show you are not feeling great, it will be used against you. You end up feeling like a fraud no matter what you do. Guilt will swallow you whole if you let it. It ravages your soul and steal away what little sunlight remains as you walk through the hell that is child protection. […] You have to climb out of the crumbled, wreck of your soul.”

– expert-by-experience Taliah Drayak

Partners

This submission was written by ATD Fourth World in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, and Human Rights Local, a project of the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex, who firmly believe in the power of making human rights locally relevant. ATD has also received a travel grant from the Equality and Human Rights Commission in order to send delegates to Geneva for the meeting of the UN Committee in February 2025.

In addition, ATD contributed to two group submissions to CESCR: one by GRIPP (the Growing Rights Instead of Poverty Partnership); and the other by Youth Voices, a project of ATD and Teen Advocacy, writing in the name of the End Child Poverty Coalition.

The process

The UN CESCR committee is the body of 18 independent experts that monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights by governments who have ratified it, including the UK Government.

The Covenant promises the rights to: non-discrimination; just and favourable conditions at work; special protection and help to the family; an adequate standard of living, including housing; education; health; social security; among other rights. Every five years, the CESCR committee engages in meaningful debate with the UK Government to ascertain if the Covenant’s standards are being upheld, to ensure that people have access to their rights.

The current review process of the UK began in 2022. Please click here to read ATD’s first submission to the committee, made then.