Parents typically need to find at least £39 per week for a child’s secondary school education and £19 for a primary-aged child, research for Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) finds.
On the sixth anniversary of the two-child limit, a Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) survey finds widespread suffering and hardship among families affected by the policy with parents across the UK struggling to meet children’s basic needs as living costs soar.
School governors, head teachers, PTAs and others working in schools have written to the Chancellor urging him to increase child benefit and expand free school meals eligibility to reduce the impact of poverty and hardship on children and on schools. The open letter says schools increasingly see children finding it harder to learn because of inadequate family incomes.
New DWP figures out today show 107,000 families are facing escalating costs as winter bites with their benefits capped. 56,000 have kids aged under five. And more than 32,000 of these capped families (over 110,000 children) are also subject to the two-child limit policy.
New research shows affected families can’t afford what they need for their kids. 59% (210,000) families caught by the limit are working. Today’s first instalment of cost-of-living emergency payment won’t do enough.
1 in 3 school-age children in England living in poverty (800,000) miss out on free school meals despite cost of living struggles of families. The main causes are restrictive eligibility criteria and lack of universal provision.