Households with children are at a higher risk of poverty than other households. Large families and single parents are at the highest risk of fuel poverty.
I had an interesting meeting I wanted to tell you about. I had the opportunity to meet with the Minister for Employment and the Secretary of State for Education at 10 Downing Street.
As food bank use continues to soar to unprecedented levels, the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) wants to see the UK without the need for charitable food aid, where adequate and nutritious food is affordable to all. But what is driving increasing demand for food aid? What is the problem with responding to food insecurity this way? What role do cash payments play as responses to poverty and destitution? And why is a ‘cash first’ approach the way forward?
Researchers have found that going to school in the UK costs families of primary school children at least £864.87 a year, or £18.69 a week. This is before childcare costs are accounted for. For families of secondary school children, the cost of sending a child to school is at least £1,755.97 a year.
Parents typically need to find at least £39 per week for a child’s secondary school education and £19 for a primary-aged child, research for Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) finds.
At a time of sharply increasing costs and stretched family budgets, ensuring that children have all they need to take part in school is another worry for families. The guide will help schools consider how they’re already supporting families and how they can make small changes to policies, practices and communications to help families through times of economic difficulty.
Families in 2022 are facing the greatest threat to their living standards in living memory. Much has been written about these pressures, but to put them into context, we need to understand what has been happening to children’s and families’ costs in recent years. The Cost of a Child reports have been produced annually for a decade, and this 2022 edition presents the latest evidence of what families need as a minimum, and how this compares to the actual incomes of low-income families.
This paper is a revision of the analysis which was published by Child Poverty Action Group on 1 August. On 2 August new gas and electricity price cap estimates were published for October 2022 and January 2023 which slightly lowered the estimates for October and slightly increased them for January.
Emergency support is financial and in-kind support provided by local authorities in England and Scotland, and by the Welsh government. What role can it play in reducing demand for food banks and food aid in Britain? CPAG has just concluded a two year research project, Ending the Need for Food Banks, to examine how emergency support could be redesigned so it does just that. What could this new system look like?
The Cost of Having Fun at School captures the experiences of pupils and parents with school fun, highlighting what we've heard from Cost of the School Day focus groups with over 8,000 pupils as well as the views of parents and carers.
