Child poverty

Low wages, rising prices, and unfair benefit rules leave family budgets stretched to breaking point. We have over 300 services across the UK; our frontline services supporting families tell us they have never seen poverty like this.

4.5 million children in the UK are living in poverty. Some families are more likely to be hit than others, including single parents, bigger families, and Black and Asian families.

The UK government has announced that the two-child limit will be scrapped in full as part of its new Child Poverty Strategy. This will lift 350,000 children out of poverty overnight, and keep half a million free from poverty by the end of the decade. Nearly half (49%) of children living in poverty are in families with more than two children.

We have been campaigning for the Labour government to remove the two-child limit and benefit cap as part of our Paying the Price campaign. Scrapping the two-child limit will mean fewer children growing up in cold homes without enough food to eat, warm clothes to wear or a bed to sleep in.

In some areas of the country, more than half of children are in poverty. Growing up without enough money means missing out on some of the joys of childhood – toys, treats and, trips out.

A child can also miss the basic essentials: shoes that fit, a proper dinner, or a hot bath on a cold day. As well as making day to day life difficult, the impact of poverty can affect a child’s future.

Since 2020, we’ve run a Crisis Fund which provides emergency grants to families and young people in our services to help with the cost of essentials like food, bills and cooking equipment.

We’ve paid more than £2 million in emergency grants since 2020 to 18,000 families and 41,000 children.

We work with others to campaign for an end to child poverty. We conduct research to discover more about the impact of child poverty, and what can be done to make life fairer for families. We speak directly to MPs and ministers and call on them to act.