10 February 2020
Our legal team has had a busy start to the new year. Last week we learned we had been successful in our High Court case challenging the fact that the higher rate of bereavement support payment for families with children is currently only paid if a spouse or civil partner dies, and not when the couple were not married or in a civil partnership. This follows a similar challenge to the previous widowed parent’s allowance – the Supreme Court found in favour of a mother and her four children in that case, but, although the law is not compatible with human rights law, the government has still not resolved the issue.
17 January 2020
Families are inevitably at greater risk of poverty than other households because there are more people to maintain on a given income. Our societies have developed social policies to help families with children in the tasks of child rearing. This briefing explores child poverty and child benefit policy in different European countries, to see whether we can learn lessons from the social policies of others.
18 December 2019
As part of our Secure Futures for Children and Families project, Megan A. Curran, PhD, postdoctoral research scientist at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University, examines how the social security system could be reformed to put children at the centre in this paper.
27 November 2019
As part of our Secure Futures for Children and Families project, Ruth Lister, member of the House of Lords and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University, examines income security in our social security system in this paper.
Factsheet explaining when a parent, or someone responsible for a child, can continue to claim benefit for a child aged 16 or over.
01 November 2019
Low-income families are faced with ongoing challenges in budgeting and balancing the regular costs of living with meeting the need for more occasional and one-off items. But it is not just expenditure that is ‘lumpy’ in this way. Income can also come into households at different times and in different amounts. Research with families looking in depth at money management highlights something of a paradox in the juggling of low income.
01 November 2019
This election period, we want all candidates from all parties to make a commitment to tackle child poverty. We've put together the big things we're calling for from the next government in a manifesto. We want the next government to invest in children's benefits, bring in a child poverty strategy and build a more effective social security system for us all.
28 October 2019
Half day training course coming up on 13 November in Glasgow
04 September 2019
The latest report in our annual Cost of a Child series finds that the overall cost of a child up to age 18 (including rent and childcare) is £185,000 for lone parents (up 19% since 2012) and £151,000 for couples (up 5.5% since 2012). The gap between lone parents’ actual income and what they need to meet family needs has grown sharply.
