OCRN Series: Sérgio Costa Araújo on 'Children’s Rights and Child Poverty in Portugal intersected with the European Union'

The OCRN are pleased to welcome Sérgio Costa Araújo to present on 'Children’s Rights and Child Poverty in Portugal intersected with the European Union: From weak social policy to new promising foundations for child social welfare development 1986 – 2023'. 

Since joining the then European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986, there has been an overall improvement in the living conditions in Portugal, particularly regarding available support to the most vulnerable groups. The European programs to combat poverty, such as the European Union's Structural Funds contributed, among others, to its social welfare development. Still, critics point out that this improvement wasn’t accompanied by sound social policy and social welfare provision, especially since child welfare developments have been insufficient.

In this session, through a socio-historical incursion, we will look at this path and collect contributions that allow us to understand the present and anticipate future impacts, namely arising from the European strategies for the rights of the child, the implementation of the action plans for the European initiative “child guarantee”, and the future Portuguese strategy for the fight against poverty that, hypothetically, will include actions aimed at combating child poverty.

Sérgio Costa Araújo has been, since 2006, higher education teacher in Portugal. He is currently Invited Adjunct Professor at the city of Porto Polytechnic School of Education and a Collaborator Researcher at inED – Center for Research and Innovation in Education. Master in Development Studies in Social and Educational Sciences and recognised specialist in the field of social and behavioural sciences, he works mostly in socio-educational areas in thematic domains that includes fighting poverty and promoting social inclusion, with particular attention in the links between children's rights, poverty and exclusion. Over the past 23 years, in these domains, he has designed, monitored and implemented several action-research projects, particularly in critical urban territories in the Porto metropolitan area, seeing some of these actions recognised as examples of good practices by external entities. He has always developed his path in a European context and, therefore, has accumulated a unique knowledge about the path of social issues within the European Union over the last 23 years. He has participated in high-level meetings, including editions of the European Commission's European Forums on the Rights of the Child; The European Expert group on the transition from Institutional to Community-based Care, formally known as the Ad Hoc Expert Group on the transition from institutional care to community-based care; high-level conferences organised by presidencies of the Council of the European Union... He is a member of Eurochild and since 2009 a member of the European working group “Children in Alternative Care” (CiAC). Deinstitutionalisation is one of his favoured subjects. He was also a member of the Expert Advisory Group of the pioneering Eurochild and UNICEF research project “DataCare Project” which comprehensively mapped child protection data systems in the 27 Member States of the European Union and the United Kingdom and which in 2023 is in its second phase of development. He is a member of the national Working Group on Child Poverty, promoted by EAPN / European Anti-Poverty Network. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Portuguese AjudAjudar – Associação para a Promoção dos Direitos das Crianças e Jovens (Association for the Promotion of the Rights of Children and Young People). In 2020, he consolidated his status as an expert on the topic “Poverty and Children's Rights in the Social Dimension of the European Union”, in the context of providing formal public evidence. He makes his own the assertion of Kant that he likes to quote from memory: theory without practice is empty, practice without theory is blind.