Hosted by the Valuing Children Initiative and funded by a donation from the ABN Group, Professor Sharon Bessell and Dr Cadhla O'Sullivan recently ran a two-day workshop with children experiencing poverty in Boorloo-Perth, to continue their More for Children research.

Led by the Children's Policy Centre at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University, More for Children is driven by the goal of all children having "material basics, opportunities now and into the future, and strong and supportive relationships".

The researchers noted that currently, Australia is far from achieving that vision, with one in six children living in income poverty - and First Nations children disproportionately represented.

The More for Children research uses a "child-centred, rights-based research methodology", put into practice through child-centred research workshops, and aims to provide "a knowledge base for change".

"Our aim is to understand deeply the ways in which poverty shapes and constrains children's lives, the systems and services that need to change, and how we can better support children to be healthy, happy and live free from poverty," they said.

132 children and young people aged between six and sixteen years have participated in the research, the majority aged between six and twelve years.

Throughout the research paper, only nicknames (not children's real names) are used. The issues paper draws heavily from what children have said and the messages they have created through artwork. Researchers note that the work should not be read as a series of individual messages, rather they have "have drawn out common themes and concerns raised consistently by children to develop a collective child standpoint, and to identify what must change".

Professor Bessell told National Indigenous Times that one in six children live in families with incomes 50 per cent below the average.

"For Indigenous children, that figure is much, much higher. But what we don't know is what that means for children. Is it just about not having enough money? Is there more to it than income poverty? What does it mean to grow up when your family is really struggling?

"So, this research has been about working with children to ask them what life is like when it's tough. We don't talk to children directly about poverty or disadvantage or those kinds of words that bring about shame and stigma, but instead, we ask children what life looks like when it's really good and what it looks like when it's tough.

"And we've heard some really confronting things from children about what life is like when it's tough and what it's like to grow up in poverty."

Professor Bessell said the researchers looked at the sort of measures that need to be looked at to give a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of poverty.

"There are two main ways of measuring poverty. One is income poverty, so that's where we just look at the amount of income that comes into a household. And that's really important, because we all know that money matters. But there's also this idea of multi-dimensional poverty, and that means that we look beyond income, and we've developed from our work with children a multi-dimensional framework.

"That has three dimensions, the material basics, opportunity and relationships. What we've heard from children is that when life's tough, when they're experiencing poverty, they don't have the material basics within their household. That means the children don't have adequate housing, they don't have enough food, they're often going hungry. It means that they don't have energy, so they're cold or in summer they're too hot. It also means that they don't have the infrastructure that they need. Public transport is not there. Healthcare facilities are not there. And, really important for children, there are no play facilities on public places, public playgrounds. B

"We also talk about opportunities, and what happens for children when they don't have the opportunity to be connected to their communities, to take part in activities that really matter when they're so stressed that they're not able to learn and they're not able to play when their health is compromised."

The professor said what's most important for children when they talk about what life is like when it's tough is when they don't have strong and supportive relationships in place.

"What's really important to understand here is this is not about good parenting bad parenting. It's about the way that systems and structures, and for many Indigenous children, racism and exclusion and discrimination place unbearable pressure on their relationships," she said.

"When relationships are good, they can buffer children from the experiences of poverty, but when parents are under incredible stress and pressure themselves, they often don't have the bandwidth to support their children, and so that's when we see multi-dimensional poverty being really problematic.

"What we have to do is shift those systems so we're not placing people under that unbearable stress and pressure."

Professor Bessell said one aim of the research is to be able to tell the story of what it's like to grow up in poverty – as a bridge to action.

"We want to bring children's experiences and their voices to the fore. But that's not what we want to achieve in and of itself. At the end of the day, what we want to do is end child poverty in this very wealthy country," she said.

"That sounds like it's incredibly ambitious, but we are a wealthy country. We're consistently ranked as the top or the second top asset-rich country on the Credit Suisse ratings. We have really high ratings on the global human development index. We often we have quite high incomes, but we have deep inequality. But in a country that's this wealthy, we can end child poverty.

"We often hear the language of reducing child poverty. We think we need to be more ambitious than that. We've worked in this research with over 130 children. If we were to reduce child poverty but not end it, that would mean that some of those children continue to live in poverty, and I'm not sure that my research team or anyone else could say that child deserves to live in poverty. So, we need to end child poverty, and that's what this research is all about it's about finding what children are experiencing, understanding how to respond, and putting better systems in place."

The professor said children interviewed who are experiencing povery consistently spoke about not having enough food and not having stable housing, and Indigenous children in particular spoke about the importance of connections and meaningful relationships.

"What we've heard from Indigenous children, has been really powerful, because for many Indigenous children, if they have access to ACCOs (Aboriginal Controlled Community Organisations), if they're playing sport in organisations that are Indigenous run and led, they often have care wrapped around them, and they have really deep connections," she said.

"So what we often hear from Indigenous children is that while they're really struggling… and all of those challenges of poverty are there, they have that care and connection because their communities are so strong. There's a lot that we need to learn about keeping children safe and connected within their communities, and there's a lot that we need to recognise about the things that are happening for Indigenous children within their communities that are really positive and protective.

MOR for Children: A Framework for Change helps researchers to understand poverty from a child standpoint. It enables them to assess progress towards ending child poverty by understanding deeply the way poverty shapes children's lives.

It also uncovers the things that matter most to children, providing a basis for action that is child-centred. Importantly, the MOR Framework provides a means of addressing the underlying causes of poverty.

The MOR Framework recognises that a lack of income is at the heart of poverty, but poverty is experienced as more than insufficient income. Poverty shapes every aspect of children's lives – creating insecurity, limiting what they can do and how they participate in their communities, shaping how they are able to learn, and often putting stress on relationships that children value deeply.