The Prime Minister must know he can’t scare people into good health, but his words this morning will be chilling for low-income families up and down the country who rely on our social security system for help.
Today’s official poverty statistics show child poverty has reached a record high with an estimated 100,000 more children pulled into poverty last year.
Universal credit (UC) claimants are not always getting extra amounts of UC they’re entitled to when they become eligible for some other benefits because of poor data-sharing within the DWP.
It’s right that benefits are uprated as usual but this should never have been in doubt and legislation mandating inflationary increases is needed as a basic protection for living standards. Struggling families have been worrying themselves sick for months about whether an unmanageable income cut was coming in order to provide the government with a rabbit-out-of-the-hat moment.
Today’s annual poverty statistics show an estimated 350,000 more children were pulled into poverty last year, largely because the Government cut the £20 universal credit (UC) uplift half-way through the year. New CPAG analysis shows child poverty costs the country £39.5 billion a year.
What impact is the cost of living crisis having on families' abilities to keep warm this winter? Parents and carers on a low income who are part of Changing Realities have shared their experiences.
Two hundred thousand more children will be pushed into poverty if benefits are uprated by wages rather than inflation, new analysis from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) finds. Almost all these children will be in families where at least one parent is working.
'Educational inequalities cannot be solved by the education system alone.’ The concluding words of the latest IFS Deaton Review report into inequalities in education came as absolutely no surprise to us here at CPAG, and no doubt to those working on the frontline within our education system either. Despite decades of initiatives, strategies and hard work being undertaken by schools, the disadvantage gap has been stubbornly persistent over the past 20 years. It’s yet more evidence that the work of our schools is being held back by the levels of poverty children are facing.
The DWP has just confirmed that it's pressing ahead with managed migration (the process by which people on the old ‘legacy’ benefits will move to universal credit (UC)). Here are six reasons for alarm as the government forges ahead with its plans to move 1.7m people by the end of 2024.
My name is Brian, I am a single parent to one daughter, we live in the south of England and I claim disability benefits. The impact on children due to the rising cost of living is heartbreaking and will have a long term impact on them. Being a single parent with a teenage daughter is tough enough but now we are having to make cutbacks to the bare minimum. My daughter now has to live in a cold, dark home as I am unable to afford the rising cost of gas and electricity, which is having a real impact on her studies during exam times. My daughter is 16 years old and currently studying hard for her GCSEs and looking forward to continuing studies for her A levels after the summer.