Counselling services offered by the government to children experiencing personal problems needed to be offered on a regular basis as the current "sparse" services are not enough, Fr Vince Magri from the Paulo Freire Institute in Zejtun said this morning.

He was sharing thoughts during a conference, entitled Children Living in Poverty in Today's Worlds, organised by the Anti-Poverty Network Malta, which is made of 12 non-governmental organisations.

The Paulo Freire Institute offers support to children and adults in need.

Fr Magri said there were many children who are unhappy but hid their problems. However, their behaviour showed they were troubled.

Some felt pressured because their parents could not help them with their homework and teachers expected the work to be done.

Children, he said, needed recreational spaces and access to free extracurricular activities.

There was an enormous lack of sensitivity with teachers dictating a list of things needed for students to take part in such activities - but not all parents could afford what was being requested, he noted.

Fr Saviour Grima, who chaired the forum, said that problems with children were on the increase.

He said he came across cases of parents not sending children to school as they could not afford school related expenses. Children were also being bullied about their lunches.

Some schools offer lunches for free and helped with activities, uniforms and stationary, he said.

National Statistics Office director general Michael Pace Ross said Government benefits to households with children included children's allowance, foster care allowance and disabled child allowance.

Last year the state spent €41 million on these benefits. Had it not been for these benefits more children would have been at risk of poverty.

A survey on Income and Living Conditions, he said, showed that, overall, 23 per cent of children under 17 were at risk of poverty compared to the national average of 15 per cent.

Most children at risk lived in single parents households.

He said that 30.9 per cent of children were at risk of poverty due to social exclusion against the natural average of 22.9 per cent.

“This is an alarming figure,” he said adding that the child poverty rate was highest in the southern and northern harbour regions.