8 tests to end child poverty in the UK: News

As a national charity supporting low-income families, we care passionately about ending child poverty and we welcome the Government’s ambitious Child Poverty Strategy due to be published in Spring 2025.

As a member of the End Child Poverty Coalition, we are setting out eight key areas which we will test the strategy against when it is published. The tests are deliberately ambitious and represent the shared view of all 120 members of the coalition.

With over 4 million children living in poverty in the UK, the coalition believes that with right strategy, the Government can halve child poverty in just 10 years.

The coalition have developed these tests based on collective insights from the children and families we work with every day who are living in poverty – not only into the heart-breaking impacts of poverty on children, but also the complex interaction of different factors that can help families break out of cycles of poverty. They have also drawn on many conversations with frontline professionals exhausted and frustrated at having to manage the symptoms of poverty, without the levers to address the root issue.

Targeted support must consider the cost of disability

One of the 8 Tests says the strategy must include targeted, additional support for children and families that are more likely to experience poverty.

According to End Child Poverty, 31% of children with a disability live in poverty. Disabled children and young people, and children with a disabled parent, are more likely to be living on a low income for a number of reasons:

• The impact of caring on family income. Parents caring for a disabled child or young person, or for another disabled family member, need to have flexible work that fits around caring responsibilities.
• The extra costs of disability. According to Scope, disabled households need, on average, more than £1,000 a month extra to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households. This is because of an increased spend on heating, food, and clothing. Family Fund’s research report My kids need what they need found that families with a child on the autistic spectrum need to spend at least £51.10 per week more on everyday household items.
• Social security benefits are not enough for families that need to rely on them.

Family Fund has written to the Child Poverty Taskforce to share our evidence on these issues. We are also currently undertaking new research looking at the financial issues affecting families raising disabled and seriously ill children and young people.

The 8 Tests also include setting legally-binding targets for national, regional and local government across the UK, and getting rid of the two-child limit on benefit payments.

Empowerment and inclusion is essential

An effective Child Poverty Strategy must recognise that the challenge of ending child poverty is also about empowerment and social inclusion of families on low incomes. The 8 Tests must include:

• Challenging the Government to listen to babies, children, young people and families. This includes involving them in developing the strategy and carrying it out.
• Asking the Government to help families into work in a supportive, appropriate way, that understands barriers to work and doesn’t punish families who can’t find work that pays.
• Making the case for improving public services, so that everyone can access good quality housing, education and transport.

At the launch of the 8 Tests this week, Joseph Howes, Chair of the End Child Poverty Coalition and CEO of our partners Buttle UK, said: “Child poverty is a blight on our society and is also completely avoidable. If the government is serious about tackling and ultimately eradicating child poverty in this country, it needs to be bold and ambitious in its investments – including immediately scrapping the two-child limit to benefit payments. Our Coalition’s eight tests offer a clear pathway to ensuring no child grows up in poverty, and we will continue working so that next year’s Child Poverty Strategy includes the right actions.”

Read more : Eight Tests for the government’s Child Poverty Strategy