Dr. Helen Russell:

In general, it would encompass all of that. When we talk about what the State can do to intervene in child poverty, we focus on all of those in-kind services. Some of the impacts are more difficult to measure than others. The ones that we tend to include in our analysis are those that are a bit closer to income, such as childcare supports or free school meals. We tend to attach a monetary value to those, which means we can include them in the analysis. Obviously, that does not capture the full impact of those services. In the case of something like school meals, the monetary value is not the total value; that has to be measured by reference to things like children's health, participation in school and concentration as well. In an ideal world, we would encompass all types of services that the State can provide. Things like free healthcare can reduce out-of-pocket expenses for families. To go back to the previous conversation, they differ hugely across countries as well, so it is very difficult to capture them in international comparisons.