Low-income families will have an estimated £1,000 shortfall for energy costs alone in the year to April 2023, if as expected Ofgem’s price cap rises to £3,554 in October, new analysis from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) shows. An announcement on the new cap is due tomorrow.
Around 35,000 more families could have their benefits capped next April, leaving them with a growing gulf between their income and rising costs, new Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) analysis shows.
"It’s a relief that government is finally waking up to the fact that families need more support and today’s announcement of interventions through the benefits system is a good start. But with almost 4 million children living in poverty the chancellor is kidding himself if he thinks that the problem is temporary or that the package he offered today will stop people finding themselves so far back that they never recover. If the chancellor is serious about supporting those who are struggling then he will need to make long-term changes to the structure of the social security system and restore the value of benefits to something that families can really live on."
An estimated 1.8 million households on universal credit (UC) are having to live on significantly less than they are entitled to because the DWP is deducting debt repayments from their benefits at an unaffordable rate, according to new CPAG estimates. There are an estimated 2 million children in these households.
With 38 bills but no direct help with spiralling costs, this speech was a far cry from what struggling families needed to hear today. Government offered no short term comfort for parents struggling to feed their kids in the face of rocketing prices, and no long term vision for ending child 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.
Child Poverty Action Group’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. Since 2012, this report series has systematically monitored the minimum cost of a child. This report updates those calculations for 2021 and outlines the factors affecting the latest figures. The total cost of raising a child to the age of 18 now stands at £160,692 for a couple and £193,801 for a lone parent.
Our Secure Futures for Children and Families project asks the question: What does a social security system that provides a secure future for children and families look like? Through a programme of roundtable events with different audiences, four citizens’ juries, and a series of written contributions, we have explored this question in detail. This report brings together what we learned from these activities.
Free school meal (FSM) provision has been thrust into the media spotlight during the pandemic. But how widespread is FSM coverage? How do parents feel about FSM provision? And what do they think could be done to improve it?