'I’m praying': From hope to fear, here’s how parents feel about the new child poverty strategy

When mum-of-three Ashley heard the new child poverty strategy, she “wanted to be hopeful”.

“I’m a hopeful individual,” the Bradford local told Big Issue. “But inside, I’m very tired. My soul, my insides are just so tired. So I don’t know.”

Big Issue spoke to Ashley, not her real name, on the day the new child poverty strategy was published. The long-awaited policy blueprint details Labour’s plans to lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030.

Its key proposals – including the already-announced pledge to scrap the two-child benefit limit – have been broadly welcomed by charities and campaigners. But how do parents feel about the plan in practice?

Ashley is a single mother to three girls, aged 16, 13, and six. Until now, she has received no benefit for her youngest daughter due to the two-child limit.

Read more:

• What lessons do Sadiq Khan’s free school meals have for Labour as two-child benefit cap ends?
• ‘Landmark moment’: Rachel Reeves scraps two-child limit to lift 350,000 kids out of poverty
• After growing up in poverty, I know the anger 4.5 million children must feel

An extra £250 to £300 per month – the amount she would receive for her youngest under the lifted limit – could be transformative.

“Oh my God. Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, I don’t know how I’d feel with that money in my bank,” she said.

“I’ll give you an example. You know, in winter, we get a £150 pound payment to help with our gas [the warm home discount]? When I get that, I think, I can breathe. I tell my girls, we can put the heating on. We can have a nice meal with meat in it. And that’s just with £150 per year, I can’t even imagine how much easier life would be.”

She also “loves” the plan to help parents with the cost of baby formula. Parents will be able to save money on through loyalty points and vouchers, the government announced earlier this week.

“100% it would have helped me. How much I struggled with baby formula! I was so relieved when my daughter hit the age when I could put her on fresh milk. I was so happy.”

But Ashley doesn’t fully trust that the new supports will reach her. “After what happened with my job, I’ve actually given up on the government,” she said.

Around a year ago, Ashley became a carer for her mum. She also works roughly 14 to 15 hours a week as a support worker for disabled people – the maximum she can earn without reducing her carer’s allowance.

However, her new wage of £717 per month unexpectedly pushed her over the universal credit earnings threshold. UC is reduced if you earn over £411 per month while living in temporary accommodation, or £684 per month otherwise.

The consequences were a shock. While her carer’s allowance remained intact, every extra pound she earned reduced her universal credit, and also affected her eligibility for council tax discounts. Ashley ended up losing around £300 per month from her previous entitlements.

The experience has left her wary of any new benefit from the government. She fears that the forthcoming payment for her youngest child will set off the same chain reaction she has just lived through with her wages: a rise in one income stream triggering reductions in universal credit and council tax support elsewhere.

Her anxiety persists even though the system treats child-related support differently from earnings. Child benefit is not counted as income for universal credit, and the universal credit child element increases a family’s entitlement rather than reducing it.

Ashley’s household is also exempt from the benefit cap because she receives carer’s allowance, so the new payment will not trigger a wider loss of support.

But her concerns reflect a broader challenge for the government – convincing families that they will be helped by a system that has hitherto punished them.

“I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, I’ll be hopeful,” she tells Big Issue, after we discuss her situation. “I’ll wait and see in April to see if I get that extra or if it goes down, with my own eyes.”

“I’m hoping, I’m praying.”

Ruth Talbot, also a single parent of three, is the founder of Single Parents Rights and has previously written for Big Issue about how the two-child benefit cap made her feel like “part of the problem.”

“As a woman, I must justify my personal life choices. As a single woman, there’s no acceptable answer,” she said. “Implicit in every discussion around this hideous policy is a belief that my beautiful baby boy shouldn’t exist, because at its very core this policy was designed to prevent women like me from having more children.”

Talbot welcomed aspects of the strategy: scrapping the two-child limit, expanding childcare support for those on universal credit, and ending the unlawful use of B&Bs for families with children for more than six weeks.

But like Ashley, she expressed concern about a social security system that pushes single parents into higher work expectations.

“We need a revision of the system so that single parent realities are front and centre of every family policy in the UK, not just an add-on at the end,” she added.

For Ashley, who is the main carer for her three daughters, the “single parent realities” to which Ruth refers have left her struggling to keep her head above water.

“We’re simple people, we’ve got a simple lifestyle,” she told Big Issue.

“But I can’t afford anything for the girls… social media is the biggest evil. They feel like they’re not enough, they want this new thing, this new lipgloss,” she said.

“I obviously can’t get that. And then the motherly guilt creeps in, what if they can’t fit in. Am I a bad mother? Can I provide for them? I just want to provide for them.”

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