End Child Poverty Coalition says the UK Government’s Child Poverty Strategy will need to be assessed against eight key tests
The End Child Poverty Coalition - a group of over 120 organisations including child welfare groups, social justice groups, faith groups, trade unions and others - has developed eight tests for the UK Government’s upcoming Child Poverty Strategy, which is due to be published in Spring 2025. These tests have been developed with the collective expertise of families who have experienced poverty as well as frontline practitioners.
The eight tests are:
- We must end child poverty: the strategy must put in place legally binding, independently evaluated, targets that build clear milestones to ultimately eradicate child poverty in 20 years.
- The views of babies, children, young people and their families must be central to both development and implementation.
- The strategy must include specific support for children most likely to experience poverty.
- Leadership and accountability from the top that drives a truly cross-government approach. This includes establishing an independent scrutiny body must be established to monitor progress on the actions of the strategy and report to the UK Parliament on overall progress in reducing child poverty.
- The strategy must work with all levels of government across the four UK nations.
- Social security reform must be the bedrock of the strategy.
- Families should be supported into work where appropriate: the strategy must outline a new system of employment support which includes a non-punitive, evidence-based approach to conditionality; and
- High quality public services must play their full part in combatting poverty: The strategy must therefore set out how the government will resource and reform public services to address child poverty.
The Coalition, of which CELCIS is a member, has also called for the two-child limit to benefit payments to end, an action, which would immediately lift 300,000 children and young people out of poverty.
The Coalition emphasises that, with the correct strategy in place, child poverty can half in ten years. It calls on the UK Government to be ambitious in its approach and insists that combatting child poverty will have a positive effect on other governmental aspirations.
The overarching test for the UK Government’s Child Poverty Strategy depends on the number of children it lifts out of poverty and whether this puts the UK on a path for the total eradication of child poverty. Joseph Howes, Chair of the End Child Poverty Coalition and CEO of 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.”
More information on the eight tests for the UK Government’s Child Poverty Strategy
More information on the development of the UK Government’s Child Poverty Strategy