Our social security system, like our NHS, should be there for us all, especially those who need it most. It needs updating, so it works in today’s world. By the time it is fully rolled out, half of all children in the UK will live in a household claiming universal credit (UC). With some financial investment and operational changes, UC can be the safety net that families need.
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.
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.
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.
Last month, chancellor Rishi Sunak stood before the dispatch box and delivered his third and most significant budgetary response to the current cost of living crisis. As he announced the measures, he pledged: 'We need to make sure that for those whom the struggle is too hard…and for whom the risks are too great…they are supported… We will make sure the most vulnerable and the least well off get the support they need at this time of difficulty.'
‘This government will not sit idly by whilst there is a risk that some in our country might be set so far back they might never recover’, said chancellor Rishi Sunak in the opening remarks to his statement this afternoon. But does this ring true? Did his announcements offer a sign of hope for families?
Is the benefit system financially adequate? The honest answer to that has to be no. Due to this fact my family along with millions of others are being plunged deeper into debt, desperation and an era of complete poverty.
Under the two-child limit, parents are not entitled to any extra support through universal credit or child tax credit to help with raising a third or subsequent child born after 6 April 2017. This means they lose out on up to £2,935 a year, and puts families’ budgets under enormous strain. Five years after the introduction of the two-child limit, an estimated 1.4 million children in 400,000 families are now affected by the policy. Unless it is abolished, the number of children affected will reach 3 million, as more children are born under the policy.
Emergency support plays a small but vital role in the social security system. It is there to help families through one-off shocks that cause a sudden drop in income or increase in costs, such as the onset of a health problem or the washing machine breaking down. But, in practice, many families are not getting the support they need when they need it, and this is contributing to the rising demand for food banks.