International Day of Families 2025 – Poverty should never be a reason for separating families
May 15, 2025
Today, Thursday 15th May 2025, the world marks the International Day of Families.
I appreciate that many may scoff and quip that this sounds like “just another fake day made up by the United Nations.” Whatever you think of the UN commemorative days (I confess that I am a big fan) they serve the purpose of highlighting the issues faced by the particular group being recognised and engendering public awareness and discourse, even if only for a short time. Given the pivotal role of families in the structure of society and in our individual lives it is, I suggest, entirely appropriate that we have this opportunity to reflect upon ‘the family’ and how they are faring in our respective societies. As a family law (and human rights) barrister currently undertaking PhD research into the legal system that is entrusted to keep children safe from significant harm and empowered to separate families when necessary and legitimate this day is particularly relevant. Today I will remember the many families whose lives I have been privileged to intrude upon; to give thanks for the many things they taught me and to silently say a prayer for them.
As with every other U.N. commemorative day the International Day of Families 2025 has a theme – “Family-Oriented Policies for Sustainable Development: Towards the Second World Summit for Social Development.” That’s rather a mouthful but at its essence is a commitment by global actors to advance the Sustainable Development Goals including the ending of poverty in all its forms everywhere (Goal 1) and providing access to justice for all (Goal 16). The Second World Summit, bringing together heads of state or government will be held in Qatar this November. It follows and aims to reinforce the Declaration on Social Development and Programme of Action born out of the first summit held in Copenhagen in back in March 1995, two generations ago. Indeed, whilst that summit made commitments to put people at the centre of policy-making and to pursue the eradication of poverty, the reduction of unemployment and integration at both the national and international level, we could be forgiven for noting ruefully that in the UK many individuals and families still endure living in poverty and employment remains a very contested political issue especially in respect of the presence of and/or need for immigrant workers. This pressing nature of this issue and the struggle to achieve social integration was manifestly borne out by the Prime Minister’s speech on Monday.
In my twenty plus years at the Bar in England and Wales I have seen that poverty, not just socio-economic but also in terms of deprivation of opportunities, education and life experiences, and the stigma and marginalisation it produces has been a thread weaving through the lives of many of the families coming before the Court in child protection cases. In my view, this remains the case today. That is a tragic and comprehensive failure of policy. Another phenomenon that seems to accompany poverty in the lives of families coming before the court is the experience of trauma, either in childhood or as adults and sometimes both. Just as we are, at last, beginning to understand that trauma-informed practices are desperately needed if we are to effect justice in the court process and outcomes for families so too, I believe, we need to take on board the need for anti-poverty practice training. Many, if not most of us working in this sphere, have no idea of what it means to live in poverty. We have no idea of what that would look practically and no idea of its pervasive and deleterious impact on our physical and mental health. We have no idea of the stigma that attaches, of the marginalisation and exclusion it produces or, of the visceral impact of being blamed for our own circumstances of poverty and the corrosive sense of failure as a parent. As lawyers being trained in anti-poverty practice is crucial to having such an understanding and central to ensuring that families with lived experiences of poverty are properly accorded dignity and respect and experience the justice system as one that is compassionate, not blaming and punitive but supportive, that recognises individual dignity and worth, an experience we would all wish for ourselves.
I am very honoured and pleased that I am spending today with a group of very special people – families with lived experience of poverty and staff, Board Members and Trustees of ATD Fourth World, an international organisation founded in 1957 by Joseph Wresinski’s who experienced poverty in childhood and which has worked tirelessly ever since to tackle poverty and the inequalities it begets, here in the UK and across the world. Today I will be reminded of the privilege I enjoyed as a child and continue to enjoy as an adult and that many others are denied. I will also be reminded that collaboration, compassion and belief can change people’s lives.
As lawyers we are called to seek and strive for justice. Let us do better. Let us ensure that poverty is never a reason to destroy a family by the permanent removal of the children.
Please contact ATD Fourth World atd@atd-uk.org if you are interested in learning about its participatory research on poverty, social work, and the right to family life, or if you’d like to know about the anti-poverty practice training ATD offers to groups.
