A brief thread to summarise:
- 72% of poor children live in working families in 2018-19, up from 70% in 2017-18, and 15% of poor children have a self-employed parent, that’s a record high.
(1/n)
- Number of children in poverty rises 100,000 to 4.2 million after housing costs (AHC), up from 3.6 million in 2010. That’s 30% of UK children below the poverty line.
- 600,000 more children in relative poverty (after housing costs) since 2010.
(2/n)
- 100,000 more children in absolute poverty (after housing costs) since 2010 while the economy has grown by 16%.
- 51% of poor children are aged under 5 - that’s more than 2 million children.
(3/n)
- Proportion of poor children in couple-families rises to 68% (up from 65% in 2017-18); 32% of poor children are in a single parent family (down from 35%).
(4/n)
Govt’s Coronavirus measures show radical action is possible yet no such urgent response to rising #childpoverty. New research by @ProfJBradshaw & Dr Antonia Keung found ⬆️ child benefit by £10/child/week would⬇️#childpoverty by 5 percentage points: cpag.org.uk/news-blogs/new… (5/5)
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The #BenefitCap was first announced #OnThisDay in 2010 by George Osborne at the Conservative party conf. It came in in 2013. It breaks the vital link between the support you need & the support you get from our social security system & pushes kids into poverty [thread] 1/17
Originally the #BenefitCap was based on the premise that non-working households shouldn’t receive more than the average earnings of working households. But this compares incomes with earnings. A working family on £26k could also receive a range of benefits and tax credits. 2/17
The #BenefitCap was then lowered in 2016 and is set at a completely arbitrary level. And this was just as the cost of living was starting to rise. 3/17
Some stories from our latest report, out today, with @churchofengland. Some may sound familiar:
“I lost my job beginning of March and been unable to find a new job as my son’s nursery closed... I am in more debt and struggling to pay bills and feed my son and myself.”
A Dad, Graham, described not being able to cheer his daughter up by giving her money:
“I’ll break down and cry some days, I’ll go to my bedroom and cry, because I can’t give her £20 to go and buy something.”
“They can see there is no money... especially also for the 19-year-old, I don’t want her to know everything that’s happening because she gets very bad panic attacks and anxiety. I try to hide as much as I can from them, but yes, they know.”
We've been monitoring the social security system during #COVID19 through our Early Warning System - here are some of the issues we're seeing again and again 1/11
1. Universal credit – the main benefit available to low-income families – is not available to everyone, even though working is now much more difficult for many. 2/11
2. There has been no financial support for children (other than free school meal vouchers for a minority). 3/11
#NationalFoodStrategy We welcome the call for an extension of entitlement to free school meals. Our CEO @alisongcpag: “Extending free school meals to kids whose parents receive universal credit would be a good step forward in protecting most disadvantaged... 1/n
"...but the evidence shows that free school meals for all kids would achieve so much more. When lunch is free for all, children’s school results are boosted, their diet improves and parents struggling to make ends meet have more to spend on nutritious breakfasts & dinners... 2/n
"The support for @MarcusRashford's recent intervention showed there’s a feeling across the UK that we’ve become too mean about providing for children in school. We don’t means-test any other part of the school day so why do we food – so critical for children’s development? 3/4
Benefit-capped working mother wins test case against DWP's irrational universal credit rules for assessing earnings - Out statement on today's judgment: cpag.org.uk/news-blogs/new…
"Our client is a working single mother who has done everything she can to support her children but has been trapped by the absurd rigidity of universal credit rules which have penalised her for being paid 4-weekly rather than monthly –a circumstance that was beyond her control...
"Far from making work pay, UC left our client humiliated & in financial misery – resorting to food banks to feed her kids... benefit-capped –even though somebody doing exactly the same work, same No of hours at the same pay would be exempt because their employer pays monthly...