Our vision and objectives

More than one in four children in the UK are growing up in poverty. It doesn’t have to be like this. Child Poverty Action Group works to prevent and end child poverty – for good.

Our manifesto

More than four million children are living in poverty in the UK. That’s nine kids in an average classroom of 30. This isn’t right, and it doesn’t have to be like this. 

We need a comprehensive strategy for tackling child poverty. A strategy that puts more money into families’ pockets, and eases the other financial pressures families face. 

Our manifesto sets out four steps which would immediately lift a million children out of poverty:

  • Scrapping the two-child limit.
  • Scrapping the benefit cap.
  • Making free school meals available to all pupils. 
  • Increasing child benefit by £20 a week for all children.

Our vision

Our vision is of a society free from child poverty, where all children can enjoy a childhood without financial hardship and have a fair chance in life to reach their full potential.

We believe

  • Child poverty is relative to the society families live in and is characterised by a lack of resources.
  • Child poverty is neither necessary nor inevitable and is responsive to policy action.
  • Policy solutions should focus on adequate incomes, prioritise prevention rather than relief, and should avoid means-testing wherever possible.
  • When governments adopt our solutions, child poverty falls.

Our objectives

Our three main objectives are to:

  1. Campaign to strengthen public commitment to end child poverty
  2. Ensure government adoption of evidence-based policy solutions to child poverty 
  3. Use our expertise to maximise family incomes and reduce child poverty

Campaigning for change

By campaigning, we work towards social and political change that will keep families from poverty.

  • Our campaigns focus on showing the impact of child poverty on children across the UK, centring the voices of children and families
  • Right now, we're campaigning for the abolition of the two-child limit and the benefit cap, for children’s benefits to be restored, free school meals to be expanded and for the Scottish child payment to be further increased.

Find out more about our campaigns

Promoting solutions

By developing evidence-based solutions, we encourage policymakers and practitioners to act to prevent and end child poverty.

  • Our evidence-based solutions are targeted at the most pressing issues, including social security reform.
  • We deliver expert projects to develop solutions around work, home and school.

Find out more about our research and our project work

Using our welfare rights expertise

By developing and sharing our social security expertise, we help maximise families’ resources and inform our evidence for change.

  • We provide welfare rights advisers with advice and information, ensuring they're equipped to deal with pressing issues, such as the cost of living crisis.
  • We challenge decisions in the courts to fight discrimination and win change.
  • We collect evidence through our Early Warning System to identify and expose weaknesses in the social security system.

Find out more about our information and services for advisers