Britain’s child poverty crisis: The families desperate for two-child benefit cap to end | ITV News

More than 4.3 million children in the UK currently live in poverty, which is a third of all children.

In the last five years, the number in food insecurity has doubled and those living in households unable to put the heating on has quadrupled.

The Labour government says tackling this is high on its agenda and has enlisted a taskforce to come up with an ambitious child poverty strategy before the end of the year.

But many are calling for immediate action now and are putting pressure on the government to reverse the two-child benefit cap, which restricts means-tested benefits to the first two children in most households.

Last week, more than 100 Labour MPs urged the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to hike gambling taxes in order to scrap the cap.

Tasha Williams is a mum from Swindon. She lives with her husband and four children. Both parents work but are unable to afford the rising prices and mounting household bills.

Statistics show that families with three or more children are much more likely to be living in poverty and that child poverty in working families is on the rise due to low growth in earnings and rising living costs.

Tasha’s youngest daughter does not qualify for universal credit because of the two-child benefit cap. She says this adds to her family being trapped in a cycle of poverty.

“It’s just not fair, especially when you’re both working and doing everything you possibly can but the situation is not improving.

“The random bills, the inflation, how much is everything going to go up next week…next month? How much is it going to go up in April? They’ve already said that we’re going to be hit with our heating bills going up, but how are we supposed to sort that out?

“Everything is having a knock-on effect. I’m stuck and it’s hard. It’s really hard.”

Tasha is among those calling on the government to scrap the cap. She says it would make a huge difference to families like hers who, in her own words, are “at the bottom of the pile”.

“They (politicians) don’t see us,” she added.

“I want Keir Starmer to live a week in my life when you’re on the end of that monthly money and you’re living day by day, with no idea what’s next. You see that bill come in and you’ve got no money so how do you pay it? Are the debt collectors going to come? I want him to feel that worry.

“He needs to realise that all this inflation is having an effect on the people who are trying to do their best.”

Scotland has acted to offset the two-child cap with early signs of improvement but across the rest of the UK, child poverty is measurably getting worse and spreading.

In the era of austerity, lifeline family services were the first to be cut. Places like youth hubs and Sure Start children’s centres closed in many communities with no direct replacement. Teachers say schools are now left to fill the gaps.

Angi Gibson is the headteacher of Hadrian Park Primary School in Wallsend and the president of the National Association of Head Teachers. She has one rule for her staff – they must offer at least one after-school club per week to help parents stay in work.

She says schools have become the buffer for families in poverty: “Schools are stepping up to do more and more because our families are coming in with more poverty problems.

“With the likes of Sure Start closures, we’ve seen a hugely detrimental effect because of that. So much so, we have now set up our own two-year-old provision so that we can get in and do that job.”

Half of all children growing up in poverty are not reaching the expected development goals by the time they start school.

Angi says there are often days when reception teachers need to change multiple children in the class because they are not yet toilet-trained.

“We see a lot of pupil absences due to their health and wellbeing and that’s because they don’t have a fully healthy diet. It’ll be convenience foods that they can afford and it’s not because that’s what the parent wants to do, it’s because that is the only thing that is available to the parent.

“In my experience, it is happening now more so than ever.”

Doctors also say they are seeing the physical signs of poverty that they thought were confined to the last century.

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