Report: Growing up in a low-income family: Children’s experiences, Children’s Commissioner (Dame Rachel deSouza, England)
What are the main points?
> ‘Harrowing’ accounts directly from children in low-income households in England reveal that they’re going without basic needs, in unsafe housing, without enough food, heating, or unable to get to school safely.
> Urgent reforms of housing, transport, education and community safety are needed to ‘break the link’ between a child’s background and their opportunities. Recommendations include a ‘triple-lock’ on all child-related benefits, and to help ease ‘the severe conditions’ children and families are experiencing.
> All four UK Children’s Commissioners – from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – have backed this, alongside a repeated call to stop the two-child benefits limit.
> Other proposals from Dame de Souza include free bus travel for all school-age children and priority for housing for children in low-income households. All recommendations have been shared with the government’s Child Poverty Unit to shape its forthcoming strategy.
EXPERT THOUGHT
The UK children’s commissioners
Joint statement: We see the toll poverty is taking on millions of children’s wellbeing – but this does not have to be inevitable. Poverty is the result of policy choices, and it can be changed. We are united in calling for a child poverty strategy that tackles the root causes of poverty and builds a system where every child in the UK can thrive.
Image | Pexels
