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?
Are poverty and income inequality separate issues determined by different factors? Can low levels of poverty co-exist with high levels of inequality? For most of the last 200 years, these key measures of social fragility have been viewed as separate conditions, with antipoverty policy focused on raising the income floor, largely ignoring what has been happening at the top. But what is the relationship between inequality and the anti-poverty agenda?
Universal credit (UC) is now the main benefit for working-age people. It is claimed by people who are disabled and by those who are not, and by those who are working and those who are not. But how well does UC support those who might need more help to claim? In particular, does the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) respond to the needs of people with mental health problems to ensure they can access UC fully?
When the coalition government published its flagship paper on universal credit (UC) in 2010, it promised a ‘digital first’ benefit. Since then we have seen the digitalisation of the UK’s working-age social security system, a process that continues today. But what impact has this transformation had on claimants and their rights?
Investment in social security alone will not be enough to end child poverty in Scotland, but the last 25 years shows us the clear link between social security and poverty rates across the UK. What opportunities do Scotland’s powers to invest in social security offer? And how can the Scottish government use them to reduce child poverty?
Many of us have been irritated by the splintering of the notion of poverty in recent years. Food poverty, fuel poverty, water poverty, digital poverty, transport poverty, period poverty: surely they are all just poverty we have cried! With ‘poverty’ defined as a relative lack of income, is there any merit in looking at different poverties?
What do the UK government’s crucial decisions about universal credit (UC) in 2021 tell us about social security policy? The government faced significant opposition to cutting the £20 which had been added to the UC standard allowance as the pandemic struck but went ahead anyway. The October 2021 budget then offered significant improvements to UC for those in work. These policy choices tell us a lot about current government priorities.
Every child death is a tragedy. With child poverty rising and deepening, what role does deprivation have in child mortality? What does the National Child Mortality Database in England tell us about what we can do to reduce the number of child deaths?
The social security system has been a central feature of the pandemic response. As we move out of the emergency phase of the crisis, however, the future direction of social security policy has rarely seemed more uncertain. How can we ensure we are campaigning for ambitious change, and how can we ensure people with lived experience of the system can bring their expertise to that campaign?
There is increasing focus in research and policy making on the importance of the expertise brought by those with lived experience of poverty. What happens when experts by experience and experts through study and practice come together to merge their knowledge on poverty? And what implications does such a merging of knowledge have for research and policy?
