The End Child Poverty Coalition and Youth Voices have collaborated to write a second submission for the examination of the United Kingdom’s 7th periodic report to the United Nations Committee  on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) It can be read here: 2025-01-ECP-ICESCR-Submission

Started by ATD Fourth World and Teen Advocacy, Youth Voices is a project led by young people with lived experience of poverty and the social care system. As co-researchers trained in safeguarding and research ethics, these young people are peer facilitators whose research has included focus groups across England and Scotland.

Speaking about social care interventions that permanently sever children’s ties with their entire extended families and communities one of the experts-by-experience quoted in the submission to the UN said this has a lasting impact on children’s sense of their own identity:

“We need to remember that this thing is not temporary. Whatever is done will affect that child. If it’s negative, then that is damaging for a long time.”

Thanks for this work to Youth Voices:

• Kaydence Drayak and Tiegan Boyens who are Youth Ambassadors for the End Child Poverty Coalition;
• Aurelia Drayak, a co-founder of Teen Advocacy;
• and Francesca Crozier-Roche, a JNC Youth and Community Practitioner, a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge and a lived-experience member of ATD Fourth World and Youth Voices.

They were supported by: Eva Carrillo Roas and Diana Skelton of ATD; Lyle Barker of the University of Essex Human Rights Centre; and Dr. Gill Main who researches child poverty and social exclusion.

The CESCR committee is currently reviewing the UK Government’s compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In this process, the contribution made by Youth Voices seeks to bring to the attention of the CESCR that children’s social care in the UK can subject children in poverty to discrimination, and that harsh interventions that sever family ties can damage their well-being and impact their identity.

To read ATD Fourth World’s submission to the UN CESCR Committee, please click here.