Building Blocks: delivering a child poverty strategy

The UK government has committed to publishing a UK-wide child poverty strategy later this year. To help inform the government’s work, CPAG with support from Save the Children UK, and funding from Impact on Urban Health, has set out how to deliver an effective child poverty strategy.

We interviewed 40 practitioners with first-hand experience of delivering a national child poverty strategy or with expertise in a specific policy area. This report presents the findings from this research and makes a series of recommendations for the forthcoming strategy, in terms of how to implement it, and the policies it should contain. 

The forthcoming strategy represents a huge opportunity to significantly reduce child poverty in the UK, which has been rising over the past 15 years. Some key themes will be critical to its success. Firstly, the strategy must contain binding targets to reduce and eliminate child poverty over the short, medium and long term. Secondly, the strategy must include investment in the social security system, and scrapping the two-child limit and the benefit cap must be the first step. These two elements will provide a strong foundation for a strategy that delivers meaningful reductions in child poverty, improving the lives of millions of children and families across the UK.