Figures released at the launch of the charity’s report, 'All worked out?', show that of the 1.95m children in the UK trapped in poverty, 440,000 of them are living in households where one or more parents work full-time.
The research also found that many of the children in poverty live in families that experience more than one barrier to work, meaning they are even less likely to be able to improve their situation by taking on work.
The analysis identified:
- 641,000 children living in poverty where at least one parent is disabled.
- 232,000 children in poverty where at least one child is disabled.
- 500,000 children in poverty where at least one child is aged under two.
- 137,000 children in poverty living in single-parent families where the parent is already working part-time with a child aged between three to 10 years.
Responding to the Prime Minister’s Questions on 9 November 2022, where he claimed that the best way to ensure children do not grow up in poverty ‘is to ensure that they do not grow up in a workless household’ and creating jobs ‘is the best anti-poverty strategy’, Imran Hussain, director of policy and campaigns at Action for Children, said, ‘We must confront the myth that everyone in poverty can simply work their way out of it.’
She added, ‘The findings show that when it comes to supporting families in financial distress, work is simply not the silver bullet it is often presented as.
‘We need more realism and less rhetoric from Government in how we talk about the relationship between poverty and work. And we need a social safety net that ensures families can meet their essential costs and restores the link between a family’s needs and the support that is available to them.’
Action for Children is calling on the Government to raise the Child Element of Universal Credit by at least £15 a week and abolish the Benefit Cap to lift “nearly 320,000 children out of poverty”.
It says that removing the Benefit Cap would help boost the incomes of those still left in poverty so that their experience “is less severe”. Both reforms together would cost the Government an estimated £4 billion a year, the charity claims.
CASE STUDY
Jack, father of three girls, works 17 hours a week as a supermarket delivery driver while his partner is a full-time carer for their children.
Jack’s youngest child has spina bifida and his oldest is autistic. He and his partner both worked full-time until their youngest was born.
Today, Jack takes home around £600 a month, and the family gets around £1,200 a month in Universal Credit. They also receive £360 Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for the youngest child; child benefit, and his partner gets £63 a week Carer’s Allowance.
Most of the DLA money goes on fuel to take their youngest to her hospital and physio appointments, over 100 miles away. They are able to claim some of the costs back, but not all.
Energy costs are a big worry for them. Their electric, on a fixed rate, costs £130 a month - partly due to all the washing they have to do. But the biggest cost they face, is food.
Every month they have to borrow money from family to buy food or pay for the fuel to get to their daughter’s appointments. They received the £326 Cost of Living payment in July 2022, but had to spend it all on fixing the car.
When they first started claiming Universal Credit, they had to wait five weeks for the first payment and take out an advance loan which was deducted from their UC payments each month. It took over a year to pay it back. Their benefit entitlements are also restricted by the Two Child limit, which means they receive no extra child payment for their third child.
Jack said, ‘We were working when we had our third child, so it was our choice. We didn’t expect to have a disabled child. We weren’t on benefits so not to get the help we need doesn’t seem fair.’
