Teachers were yesterday urged to be careful not to expose the financial situation of poorer students in front of their classmates and to be more sensitive towards the embarrassment this causes.

The point was raised by several speakers who shared their thoughts during a conference about children in poverty organised by the Anti Poverty Forum Malta, made up of 12 NGOs.

Fr Vince Magri – from the Paulo Freire Institute in Żejtun that offers support to children and adults facing hardships – was the first to mention the need for more sensitivity at school.

Children needed access to free extracurricular activities, he said.

But there was “an enormous lack of sensitivity” when teachers dictated a list of items that had to be bought to take part in such activities.

Former children’s commissioner Sonia Camilleri, who is a teacher, also stressed this point.

“There is lack of sensitivity as we are embarrassing these children each time we ask for a euro for something,” she said, adding that schools often collected money for outings, photocopies or donations.

She said that by speaking to heads of various schools it was evident that there was some form of poverty in all schools.

Some were visible and consisted of children turning up with a dirty uniform or no lunch.

Then there was the invisible poverty that led to some children regularly not coming to school.

“We still don’t have enough resources to follow up on these children,” she said, adding that bullying was a growing problem.

The worst form of poverty, she said, was the result of children not having parents who knew how to raise them. Some parents were genuinely overcome by problems, but others were immature and required help.

This immaturity was seen in values they passed on: for example, parents telling their children that school was not important.

Fr Magri spoke about the need to have regular counselling and therapy offered to children in need as the sparse services, offered every few months, were not helping.

He also called for the revision of the supervised access visit system, through which children visited one of their parents under supervision. In many cases this was detrimental to the youngsters, he said.

Ruth Sciberras, from government support services Appoġġ, said these visits were either ordered by the court or provided to children under care order.

This was a complex service as a balance had to be reached between the rights of parents and children, she said.

This year, 27 care orders had been issued, and 32 issued last year. As she gave an example of what led to a care order, she spoke of five siblings whose family forced them to have sexual relationships with one another.

Michael Pace Ross, director general of the National Statistics Office, said recent figures had shown that 23 per cent of children were at risk of poverty and 31 per cent at risk of poverty and social exclusion.

Last year, the State spent €41 million in benefits for children and had it not been for such help there would be more children at risk of poverty, he said.

Social Solidarity Minister Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca said one of the problems of tackling the poverty problem was that government structures and NGOs were territorial and there was a duplication of services.

She recognised the need for more human resources adding that many social workers and psychologists were burnt out because of their caseload.

Fr Saviour Grima, who chairs the Anti Poverty Forum, said there was the need to have a register listing the services available for people in need.