A poll of English primary and secondary teachers, conducted by the NEU, found six in seven teachers (86%) say child poverty is limiting opportunity for their pupils to some extent. Two in five say it is limiting pupil opportunity greatly.
The government must invest in social security to reduce child poverty, boost living standards overnight and improve wider economic, health and educational outcomes.
There are limited exemptions to the two-child limit in universal credit, one of which is if the child has been conceived non-consensually, either due to rape or coercive control. In that situation, the woman who has experienced this abuse has to disclose it in order to get vital support for her child. Since the two-child limit was introduced in 2017, this has been one of the most harmful, insidious aspects of an already deeply damaging policy.
More than 100 organisations representing doctors, teachers, social workers, health visitors and more warn government against ‘half-measures’ on two-child limit.
As this government recognises, every child deserves the best start in life. But a record 4.5 million children live in poverty. Their life chances are being held back and their potential wasted. They deserve better.
CPAG’s annual Cost of a Child report looks at how much it costs families to provide a minimum socially acceptable standard of living for their children. It is calculated using the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) research, carried out by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
There are a record 4.5 million children living in poverty living in the UK today. CPAG forecasts that without further action this number will rise to 4.7 million by the end of this parliament. The government must invest in social security to reduce child poverty, boost living standards overnight and improve wider economic, health and educational outcomes.
The shocking failure to properly plan or to assess the impact of decisions made during the pandemic on children has left a generation paying a heavy price.
More and more families are being capped because the cap threshold has been largely frozen since 2016 while the cost of living has risen sharply and rents in particular have skyrocketed.
A lone parent family with three children can now expect to be capped across 95 per cent of England and Wales, compared to 60 per cent just two years ago in 2023. The cap leaves all affected families with very little to live on once housing costs are accounted for. In inner London, a lone parent family with three children can be left with just £3 a week to live on after paying rent. In Brighton, a similar family would be left with just £89 a week to live on after rent.
