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Consultation Response Tackling Child Poverty and Improving Life Chances: Consulting on a new approach Introduction This is a consultation response from the ESRC-funded Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom (PSE) team, which is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queens University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. The primary purpose of the PSE research is to improve the ‘state of the art’ of poverty and social exclusion measurement. Question 1: What do you think are the key points from the Frank Field Review which the Government needs to incorporate into the child poverty strategy? We welcome the suggestion of increased emphasis on the early years, improving parenting and the availability and quality of services for families and children. All children would benefit from improved adequately funded early years’ services. Similarly, all children, both rich and poor, would benefit from improved parenting. However, parenting quality is not a primary cause of poverty in the UK or in other countries. Parenting skills and poverty both have important but independent effects on children’s outcomes. However, we are concerned that the philosophical position displayed in the introduction by Frank Field to the Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances is an attempt to revive the discredited Cultural Deficit theories of the 1960s. For example, the following statement is pejorative, anecdotal and unsupported by any evidence in the Review: “I no longer believe that the poverty endured by all too many children can simply be measured by their parents lack of income. Something more fundamental than the scarcity of money is adversely dominating the lives of these children. Since 1969 I have witnessed a growing indifference from some parents to meeting the mos