More than 2 million children in families struggling to pay for essentials – report | UK news | The Guardian
More than 2 million children live in families that are cutting back their spending on food, clothing or heating as a result of government decisions to impose cuts in real terms on child-related benefits, new research finds.
Rates of both child benefit and child tax credits have been pegged at less than the cost of living for the past three years, causing one in five families to struggle to provide living essentials, according to the End Child Poverty coalition.
It has called on the government to introduce a “triple-lock” guarantee similar to that applied to the state pension to ensure children’s benefits rise in line with prices, earnings or by 2.5%, whichever is the higher.
Not much will happen here until multiple agencies work together and educate parents on money management and how to claim what they are entitled to.
Think about the amount if benefits that go unclaimed.
Smaller class sizes in schools are needed so that teachers can identify children suffering from neglect, (something that is under-reported and I unfortunately have too much first-hand experience of)
so that real action can be taken.
The likes of Credit Unions, Trade Unions and community groups need to come together to provide a quality service.
I totally agree that much more needs to be done at the local level. There is very little likelihood that the neoliberal speke will change- just read the Treasury comments.
Sheer denial. Just like the ‘correct procedures’ were followed when someone sanctioned has died.
Inhuman.
My other half runs a not for profit that works with schools to provide help for parents. It might be teaching them about food or hygiene or helping them with benefits or debt. The aim, from the school’s perspective, is to ensure that the children are in attendance and able to learn. They can’t do that if the parents can’t feed them or they’re too embarrassed to go to school because their clothes smell because they haven’t been washed.
Much of the problem for schools is a lack of experience in dealing with these issues. They are educators, not social workers. Their funding has changed so that each school is responsible for supporting families rather than have the LEA provide these services and the schools signpost parents to the LEA. They have to do it themselves and they don’t have the resources or the experience to do this well. Often that means that they aren’t funding the kind of support that is needed. Parents certainly don’t have the resources they need to fund one of one training and social services have been cut back so far that they can’t do anything either.
It isn’t just the money coming in that has been cut, it’s support across the board that has been cut too.