A change is coming to child benefit. This Saturday, more families will become eligible as the earnings threshold at which you start losing child benefit increases. The government has finally recognised that ‘the way we treat child benefit in the tax system is confusing and unfair’ and proposed two changes to try to simplify it. It’s ironic that this confusion and unfairness was introduced by the government in the first place.
This blog explores some of the pros and cons of getting short-term assistance while challenging a determination to reduce or remove an award of adult disability payment (ADP) or child disability payment (CDP). Advisers should be aware that some people can be worse off in the long run.
CPAG in Scotland’s Early Warning System has been operating for ten years! Over Challenge Poverty Week we are looking back at some of the social security events in this period, key findings from the Early Warning System and how they have influenced policy and practise.
People working in schools witness the impact of poverty on children and families on a daily basis, and the scale and severity of the problem mean schools are reeling up against it. To understand exactly how child poverty affects the whole school system in England, the Education Anti-Poverty Coalition, convened by Child Poverty Action Group, has conducted a first-of-its-kind survey of professionals working in every role in schools in England.
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.
A report commissioned by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland from the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University has found a widening gap between the cost of raising a child in Scotland and actual family incomes, despite the significant impact of Scottish government policies and lower childcare costs.
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.
Frances Ryan, Welfare Rights Worker at CPAG in Scotland, takes a look at ‘adult disability payment’ (ADP), a new disability benefit for working-age people who live in Scotland.
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.