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November 24, 2011

EDMONTON - A new report shows the number of Alberta children living in poverty has increased 40 per cent in recent years, and Alek Kuot’s six children are among them.

The 35-year-old Sudanese refugee was laid off last year and her husband, who works in a bakery, brings home $2,000 a month. Rent is $1,400.

“It is hard,” Kuot said in broken English while her four-year-old son Deng played at his ABC Head Start program Wednesday morning. The family escaped from war-torn Sudan, where Kuot was shot through the knees when she was 12 years old.

“I shop at discount places, I try to find work ... but I can’t (read or write) English so it is hard for me to get a job. When I am working, I cannot (find) daycare,” Kuot said. The children can’t take part in school activities because the family can’t afford it, Kuot said, even with the help of a $1,000 child tax credit.

The report, In This Together: Ending Poverty in Alberta, was released Wednesday by a coalition of anti-poverty advocacy groups.

It cites Statistics Canada figures that show the number of children living below the poverty line in Alberta jumped from 53,000 in 2008 to 73,000 in 2009, the last year for which figures are available.

While single moms are still twice as likely to live in poverty as women living with partners, the poverty rate has doubled among children in two-parent families, the report says.

Further, nearly half of all children who live in poverty come from homes where one or more people work full-time, year round.

A rising tide may lift all boats, but “Alberta’s economy is lifting the yachts much faster than it is lifting the canoes,” said John Kolkman of Edmonton’s Social Planning Council, which released the report with the Alberta College of Social Workers and Public Interest Alberta. “The recession hit vulnerable Albertans hard.”

Lori Sigurdson, a social worker and provincial NDP candidate in Edmonton-Riverview, said the province needs a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy. “We all benefit when the most vulnerable in our society are cared for,” she said.

Head Start executive director Kathy Lenihan said the preschool program for low-income families turns away 900 needy families each year. She said children from impoverished families suffer high levels of dental problems, learning delays and interpersonal troubles, partly because parents are stressed and working and don’t have adequate supports.

“The message I have for this government is that these kids are here. We work with 370 every year, we can’t begin to serve all of those who knock on our door,” Lenihan said. “Child poverty is real in this province and until we start to address it is not going go away.”

Premier Alison Redford responded to the report saying rising child poverty rates are “not acceptable” and pointed to her government’s plan to introduce a social policy framework that ensures the province is taking care of its most vulnerable.

Redford rejected the idea that a growing economy alone has the power to address poverty, calling the notion ill-informed. “That’s not true,” she said. A province of nearly four million people can develop “structural social issues” if those potential problems are not addressed early on, she said. “We have to deal with that.”

Kuot, the impoverished mother of six, was asked whether she has a message for the premier. She said no, she doesn’t know how to fix poverty. She did have a question.

“I would like her to show me how I should divide up the money,” Kuot said. “If they will come divide up the money (then) they can see how hard it is for me.”